A screenshot of the Windows 11 privacy panel has gained millions of views on social media in recent days. Several posts claimed that Microsoft secretly uses artificial intelligence in the background, consuming RAM resources and reducing computer performance during gaming sessions and live streams. As Windows Latest confirms, this is not true.
The menu in question is located under Settings > Privacy & security > Text and image generation. This section lists applications built into the operating system, such as Notepad, Photos, Snipping Tool, and the Outlook client.
The presence of these programs on the list led people to wrongly believe that the system was constantly generating content.
Background AI Isn’t Slowing Down Your Games
Microsoft’s official documentation explains that this screen works only as a permissions control panel. Its purpose is to show which tools on the computer have permission to use the generative artificial intelligence models built into the operating system. An application appearing on the list does not mean that it is running processes at that moment.
The screenshot shared on social media itself disproves the claim that resources were being used. The Recent activity section at the bottom of the menu showed a record of zero processed requests. If the system were continuously running AI tasks, the counter would show continuous processing requests.
On computers certified as Copilot+, these local text and image generation features depend on the NPU, a specific component designed to achieve more than 40 TOPS. By sending these tasks to the dedicated chip, the processing does not require the use of the computer’s CPU, graphics card, or regular RAM.
The permissions option for text and image generation is enabled by default after installing Windows 11. Users who prefer to disable these permissions can do so by turning off the main switch at the top of the privacy menu. The system will stop giving prior access to the mentioned applications without changing the normal operation of the computer.
