Edge beta feature to sharpen photos with AI sends data to Microsoft

Microsoft is testing a new feature in Edge that uses artificial intelligence to sharpen images. It is striking that this function is turned on by default and appears to send information to Microsoft servers.

This is a function that Microsoft calls Turing Image Super-Resolution. Company released it as a test in Edge last month. The feature applies to blurry images in Edge. The browser will have an option to sharpen such images with artificial intelligence. This also happens with satellite images in Bing Maps.

Although the feature has been around for several weeks, an additional option has now been added. On Twitter users notice that this function has been automatically enabled for them and that additional information has now been added. The settings now state that ‘the URLs of images are sent to Microsoft’, which would be necessary to implement the function.

It is possible to disable the function, but this is an opt-out. This can be done in the privacy settings of the browser. Super Resolution is not available to everyone; it seems to be tested mainly among Windows users. In a more recent test it is also possible to exclude certain websites or explicitly add them to the function. Users can then say that Super Resolution enhancement should automatically apply to all websites or none at all, with exceptions for both options.