A Microsoft exec has admitted that the Windows 11 design team is using AI

• Windows 11 is cutting some Copilot features on the right-click menu
• At the same time, a Microsoft exec said that "AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly"
• The exec added that "we're even seeing designers contribute directly to code fixes" and this has caused quite a stir online with anti-AI pushback

Windows 11 is getting tweaked to cut back on Copilot functionality, while at the same time, a Microsoft exec has admitted that the operating system's design team are using AI to help them – which has provoked something of a reaction, as you might expect.

First up, the move to cut back on AI, which as Windows Latest reports consists of stripping out some Copilot options from Windows 11's context menu, the one which pops up when you right-click on a file or folder.

In a post on the Microsoft 365 Message Center, the company explained: "We're retiring the OneDrive Copilot Summarize, Create FAQ, Compare Files, Ask a question, Explain image, Explain images, Compare images, Extract text actions from the File Explorer context menu."

These are Copilot actions which are tied to OneDrive, then, that folks who don't use Microsoft's cloud storage wouldn't have seen anyway.

You can still reach these options using the 'Ask Copilot' icon in the right-click menu, so overall, this is a streamlining change for the better (albeit one that some users won't even realize has happened).

It's not being implemented right away, but from mid-November, and by the end of the year, these options will have disappeared from Windows 11's context menu.

Now for the more controversial development that Windows Latest also noticed, namely a comment from a Microsoft executive on X. Diego Baca, who is VP of Design for Windows, posted in reply to a comment pushing for "Windows design unification" (better consistency) and using AI to help to that end.

Baca observed: "On AI agents, 100% agree. I'm not the best person to speak to the engineering side, but AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly. We're even seeing designers contribute directly to code fixes that improve craft, consistency, and quality. That's exciting progress, and we're only getting started."

The key part of this that's getting picked up on social media is the admission that AI is being used by the Windows 11 design team to ensure tasks are completed more swiftly, and that it's helping designers to contribute code fixes. As you might guess, there are some unhappy people out there due to this admission.

Analysis: a chorus of noticing

(Image credit: Phovoir / Shutterstock)

As noted, the reaction on Reddit has been predictably full of barbs and withering fire at Microsoft. This upvoted post complains: "We noticed [the use of AI in coding], the rapid decline in quality, every patch bricking at least some devices, major releases bricking entire fleets, and the introduction of major security vulnerabilities that are easily exploitable makes it clear the codebase is being vibecoded with insufficient code review and testing."

In fact, there's quite a chorusing of "we noticed" or "we know" regarding Microsoft turning to AI in coding, as well as the inevitable "slop" accusations, including the likes of: "And this is how Linux goes mainstream, not because it becomes better, but because Microslop becomes unusable thanks to AI integrations." (I should note that as you may have seen, Linux has its own controversies with AI, but that's a whole other story).

At any rate, I think we need to dig down a bit into the meaning of Baca's statement here. When the exec says, "AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly," it's a pretty broad statement – perhaps referring to assistance on the design brainstorming front more than coding.

Yes, designers may "contribute directly to code fixes" now with the help of AI, but how often is that really happening? I'm guessing not that much, and that this work is more about simple interface tweaks and polish than anything, and this code will be passed to software engineers to be fully checked and reviewed – the main hope being it saves a bit of time. There's a lot of the Windows interface to fix, after all.

I think the hostility here is a bit unfair given that Baca is just trying to be honest about what Microsoft is doing, and I don't think the reality is that Windows 11's interface is suddenly being vibe-coded (by AI) to any great extent. What's happening is that Windows 11 users are jumping on this and venting because they're fed up of too many bugs, and that has nothing to do with the design team.

For me, this is about Microsoft's broader failure with Windows 11 bug testing and flaky updates, which isn't something you can lay at the door of AI as such. Rather, this is about the overall QA (quality assurance) processes which aren't picking up these problems and sorting them out before release (whether any given bug was introduced by AI, or not).

This is what's really the root cause of the outbursts on social media here, and the comments about patches going wrong and general unreliability. And this is what Microsoft really needs to fix, and fast – it remains the biggest problem with Windows 11 that needs addressing.