back to article Cognitive Services, Clippy? AI's silent infiltration of Microsoft's Office stack

In just over a year, Microsoft has launched and expanded a set of APIs called Cognitive Services, which handle everything from face and emotion recognition, to a Language Understanding Intelligence Service (yes, LUIS for short) and a Custom Decision Service. At the Cognitive Services homepage you can get your hands on …

  1. Pen-y-gors

    Custom Decision Service?

    Something to do with filling in all those lengthy Customs Declarations businesses will need post-Brexit, and predicting what the tariff will be?

    1. Commswonk

      Re: Custom Decision Service?

      Computer says no becomes a reality.

  2. EddieD

    The last thing MS translate came up with for me...

    My hovercraft is full of eels.

  3. Peter2 Silver badge

    Oh, wonderful.

    We can now experiance the joys of "It looks like your writing a letter. Would you like some help with that?" again.

    1. Aladdin Sane
      Headmaster

      Re: Oh, wonderful.

      It may have helped you select "you're" instead of "your" though.

      1. cambsukguy

        Re: Oh, wonderful.

        and spelled experience correctly.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Gimp

    Debutting soon.....

    Gimpy, the personal slave.

    I do believe this is the perfect system for American companies who refuse to hire staff with language skills for overseas offices.

    The results should be hilarious.

  5. Aladdin Sane

    I wonder what would happen if you dictated a suicide note?

    Asking for a friend.

  6. jelabarre59

    SE

    So they're going to use Stack Exchange for support? I guess MS wanted a support channel that was MORE hostile and aloof than MS, to make their own options look better.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SE

      At least on Stack Exchange you might get some answers based on an actual understanding of your problem, unlike Microsoft's own support forums where you just get some "MVP" in India posting links to the knowledge base articles that you already found via google, and that didn't fix your problem otherwise you wouldn't have been posting the question.

      1. sebt
        Flame

        Re: SE

        ... and then some other Microsoft "MVP" marking the answer as awesome, correct and accepted. Probably by using a bulk script.

  7. TeeCee Gold badge
    Happy

    Without cognitive Clippy:

    "I see you're trying to XYZ. Would you like help with that?"

    "Fuck off".

    With cognitive Clippy:

    .....

    (as Clippy works out the question, correctly predicts the response and decides to STFU).

    So an AI Clippy would indeed be an improvement.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Will it use the webcam to spot you making obscene hand gestures at the computer?

  8. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    Shouldn't AI be called Real Stupidity?

    1. ma1010
      Trollface

      No, actually..

      It's going to be called "Genuine People Personalities."

      1. Robert Moore
        Unhappy

        Re: No, actually..

        It's going to be called "Genuine People Personalities."

        You're a personality prototype. I can tell.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    One thing that's bothered me for a while is whether Microsoft knows enough about me.

    I thought Windows 10 telemetry was the answer, with its aggressive and time consuming hoovering up of all my data, but it left a few unexplored facets of my existence untouched.

    I was saddened, dissatisfied and bereft, until I read this article and found more ways I can plug the Microsoft Aggressive Information Extraction (MAggIE for short) platform into even more of my digital orifices. I can't wait to sign up and ignore the 75 page EULA. Now it'll be almost like me and SadNad are literally joined together, and not at the hip either.

    Microsoft will know more about me that I know myself. I hope to be able to painlessly pass on my bank account details so Microsoft's clever data scientists and AI can just buy me the things that make me happy. "Consume to fight gloom!" as the marketing gods say.

    This is fantastic news, possibly the best thing I read ever. Even better than watching Theresa May and Donald Trump wrestling naked in warm mud, like two big global political hippos, with me holding the camera.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "Even better than watching Theresa May and Donald Trump wrestling naked in warm mud,"

      That's going to take a lot of mind bleach to clean away.

  10. fobobob

    The end is nigh upon us. I, for one, welcome our new bent metal wire overlords.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Why worry?

    It's well know all El Reg readers are running Linux!

  12. TheVogon

    "It's well know all El Reg readers are running Linux!"

    Yep, Ubuntu from the Windows 10 Store here!

  13. Keith Oborn

    M$ is already way ahead of this-

    https://youtu.be/uNjxe8ShM-8

    If Powerpoint can be Turing Complete, the rest of us should just roll over and accept the inevitable.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Re: M$ is already way ahead of this-

      Turing Complete != Turing Test

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