Microsoft is adding a new element to Word for Windows — predictive text. But just look at how the company describes it.
Tech companies are often busy catching up with each other. “Look what they’ve done! We have to do the same or our very walls will collapse around us!” No, I’m not specifically referring to Facebook here. In fact, I’m marveling at the latest little snippet to emerge from the constantly evolving Microsoft. As my colleague Liam Tung reported, Redmond is introducing Text Predictions in Word for Windows. Because humans can’t be bothered to type whole words anymore. They need to have an artificial brain sitting on their keyboard like a wise, lonely cat, ready to get ahead of translating their thoughts into words. Microsoft’s move mimics that of Google which has already injected its Smart Compose for Google Docs in G Suite, as well as, oh, planting the dreaded autocorrect to Google Docs on the web. Naturally, my first reaction was to delight that I use Word on Mac rather than Windows and to pray to my wine supply — hey, we all have to believe in something — that these Text Predictions fail to come to my constantly tired MacBook Air. (Which, according to a Best Buy salesman, is the best Windows laptop.) But then I lurched toward the Microsoft 365 Product Roadmap for this update and found myself staring for a long time. Here’s what it says: “Text Predictions in Word for Windows helps users write more efficiently by predicting text quickly, timely and accurately.” I wonder if you see what I see. You see, what I see is that this little description may have been written by a machine with a special grasp of the English language.
