Windows 11 is accused of using AI to slow down computers, but the truth is not as rumored

A screenshot of the Settings > Privacy & security > Text and image generation page on Windows 11 is going viral, gaining millions of views on social networks. This page lists a series of applications such as Notepad, Photos, Snipping Tool, Outlook... under on-device AI permissions, causing many users to misunderstand that Windows is silently running AI in the background and consuming system resources.

Some accounts also took advantage of this wave to advertise "Windows optimization" services, accusing Microsoft of reducing gaming performance by running AI without asking for user permission.

The truth behind the viral photo

The irony is that those same disturbing screenshots suggest there is nothing to worry about. Just scroll down to the Recent activity section, users will see a number of "zero" requests, meaning no AI processing requests have ever been made. If the Text generation feature records 0 requests, then there is no way it could be taking up the machine's RAM. According to Microsoft's official documentation, this page was created to "show apps that have recently used generative AI models on Windows-powered devices", while also allowing users to "choose which apps are allowed to use generative AI technology". In other words, this is just a list of apps that have permission to use AI, which does not mean they are actually running AI.

The most important factor that viral posts intentionally omit is the phrase "on-device". Microsoft describes this feature as running on the NPU of the Copilot+ PC, a chip specialized in handling AI tasks that the company requires to achieve at least 40 TOPS or more. This means that AI text or image creation, if it occurs at all, will not go through the machine's regular CPU, GPU or RAM. Notably, not all Windows AI features are limited to Copilot+ hardware anymore, as Phi Silica now runs on select NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, but that's another story.

The author of the article on Windows Latest personally tested it on a machine without Copilot+ PC, without NPU. After turning this feature on and off and monitoring RAM usage, there were no changes in the results. If AI really runs in the background continuously, the number of requests should gradually increase over time, but the number "0 requests" completely negates the hypothesis that something is consuming resources in the background.

An account called ParagonTweaks once posted a post claiming "Windows is using AI to reduce PC performance when playing games and livestreaming", to lure users into buying a paid tweaking tool, this post has reached 4 million views.

Why is false information easily spread?

Microsoft is not completely blameless in allowing this misunderstanding to occur. The problem lies in the way the feature is named: "Text and image generation" sounds as if Windows is generating text and images throughout the system, while the list of applications displayed is full of familiar names like Notepad, Photos, Outlook, making it easy for users to deduce that they are active. This settings page also does not make it clear from the beginning that this is just a list of permissions tied to a hardware feature that most computers cannot use. The Recent activity section, the only place that answers the real question of whether AI is running or not, is collapsed to the bottom of the page by default. Additionally, all of these features are enabled by default instead of asking the user for permission the first time an app requests use, like Windows does with microphone access.