The humble screenshot might be the key to great AI assistants
2 min read
Summary
The screenshot is an invaluable tool in the era of AI, allowing users to capture and store information with ease, says Johnny Bree, the founder of digital storage app Fabric, because screenshots are the most universal method of capturing digital information as they can capture anything and save and share it to almost any device, app, or person.
It puts users in control, allowing them to decide what information they want the AI system to have rather than giving it unlimited access to everything.
However, there is a problem in figuring out what is actually in the screenshots as AI has difficulty in knowing whether things captured matter, and the next step is to make devices and apps that use screenshots to train the system and use the information to help users and get things done.
This is called agentic AI, where every company in tech seems to be working on using AI to accomplish things on users’ behalf without writing long prompts or chatting back and forth with an assistant, but rather taking a screenshot, which is something users are already familiar with and do all the time.
This could revolutionize the future of computing, which includes multimodal features like cameras, microphones, and sensors, and it is the first best way to use AI.