[shdon]

Unless it can be used as a more or less generic modifier key, I don't really see the point of a key dedicated to this one function. The placement on the keyboard in the photo would suggest that either the space bar is shrunk down or one of the keys to its right is removed to accommodate the new key. That doesn't seem optimal to me. Maybe the dedicated context menu key can be removed, which is equally useless as it replaces just a single mouse click (and feels less predictable than that click, as it's not as obvious where the menu will appear).

Ignoring the marketeer drivel of how "excited" they are and how a single key on a keyboard would make AI any more useful, I have to wonder how many people would actually use it. People who see AI as a threat or distrust it (or just don't think it has a place in an OS) will likely ignore it, disable it, or be annoyed by it. People who are enthusiastic about it would probably be just as likely to simply put it in a prominent spot on the task bar for easy access.

Feels like, just because ChatGPT and Dall-E etc are the "hot (semi-)new thing", this is just an effort to jump on to that bandwagon. I wouldn't be surprised if Copilot (at least insofar as it is integrated in Windows) will meet the same fate as Cortana.

As a practical question (I've not got Win11 and haven't experienced Copilot on there): what does it [i.e. Copilot] actually bring to the Windows desktop experience? Does it make anything more efficient, easier or more discoverable? I can't for the life of me think of a reason I'd need an AI to do any of the stuff I use my desktop OS for. At least the Bing chatbot (while creepy) in Skype makes some sense for the interface, but that doesn't seem to have its tendrils deep into the OS.

[ryanklee]

> I can't for the life of me think of a reason I'd need an AI to do any of the stuff I use my desktop OS for.

If the key can flexibly consume whatever content is in the current context -- images, audio, text, selectable files -- and potentially have access to RAG, it seems to me that the number of potential use cases is very high.

Of course, everything hinges on "flexible" -- if it's mono-modal and doesn't access context in an intuitive way, it'll be tough for it to find a place in people's workflows.

[shdon]

My question wasn't about the key per se (which is just a trigger for Copilot, it seems), but about what Copilot itself brings. Can it do any of the stuff you describe?

[ryanklee]

I'm addressing your particular point about not seeing any use for this in the OS. I disagree. If there is a flexible layer that can consume and correlate context, there are tons of use cases

[shdon]

Then indeed there might be. I'm not saying AI is useless in general, even though it might be totally irrelevant to my personal workflow. But my question is still what Copilot brings. Does it do what you describe? If not, what does it do?

[ryanklee]

Yeah, I doubt it does anything close to what I'm talking about. If it did, it would be a massive leap forward in integration. More likely, the button opens up Copilot side-bar and only takes text input. But we shall see. Maybe some RAG going on, maybe a bit capable of multimodal, but I'd be a little surprised if there's more than the usual "prompt LLM here".

[Findecanor]

> Maybe the dedicated context menu key can be removed, [...]

In my opinion, the Menu key would be better repurposed as a Compose key. It is very useful for typing characters that don't have symbols on the keys, e.g: ♥ ⇒ … — × · ÷ Å Æ Ø Ü.

I have used it in Linux and Solaris, which have support for it if you just enable it. For Windows and MacOS, you'd have to use a third-party utility at the moment.