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Why is predictive text so hard to disable? (beehaw.org)

submitted 5 months ago by friendly_ghost@beehaw.org to c/programming@beehaw.org

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Does anyone know, or can anyone guess, the business case for predictive text? On phone apps, it is often incredibly difficult to turn off. Why is that, do you think? (The examples I have recent experience with are Facebook and Outlook mobile apps.)

I would have thought that, for AI training purposes, they would want humans typing things and not just regurgitating canned responses. But apparently not?

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[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago

I've seen this in a few places on desktop, and I have no clue why it's even a feature. I'm not aware of anyone using it anywhere (although to be fair I haven't thought to ask).

As for why it's enabled by default, probably for visibility. The easiest way to get people to use a feature is to make them use it and make them explicitly disable it (if even an option). For AI training, they could theoretically just capture typing data and messages regardless of if the feature is enabled/disabled anyway.