I mean, yes. That’s what we’re all kind of conjecturing on at the moment.
I want to warn against conspiratorial thinking because I’m always trying to avoid falling into it myself. We won’t ever really probably have direct proof of a lot of this unless there are credibly authenticated insider leaks from Microsoft.
But we can analyze evidence. Things like seeing that the Terms of Service have been updated for so many apps and online platforms to automatically opt-in your work for AI training purposes. The fact that Microsoft is forcing online accounts. The fact that Microsoft is defaulting save locations to OneDrive (https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-word-forcing-you-to-save-new-files-to-the-cloud-heres-how-to-stop-it/) and that they are training AI on pictures you’ve saved there and you can only opt out 3 times a year??? (https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/onedrives-ai-face-scanning-feature-suggests-it-can-only-be-disabled-3-times-a-year-but-that-doesnt-seem-right)
Telemetry is already pretty opaque; it’s hard to tell what data they are wrapping up in it and if I understand what you’re saying correctly, yes. It’s very easy to keep that bottled until the next time the computer comes online so that even your “offline” activities are monitored. Look at Recall or even before that, Activity History was already giving me the heebie-jeebies (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/what-is-the-recent-activity-page-23cf5556-4dbe-70da-82c8-bb3a8d8f8016)
They already consumed the entire internet, probably some time ago it’s been theorized. In order to keep chasing those diminishing returns they are incentivized to chase every new data source because that scales into profit (no it doesn’t, that’s the bubble, but that’s a whole other conversation).
It’s pretty bleak. Use Linux, etc.
Valid, but that’s also why I enjoy typing up these posts, too. Sometimes people just kind of intuit that they dislike something and giving them the words to more properly form their thoughts is the first step at breaking out of those patterns. I think for a not insignificant number of people, not being able to properly articulate their thoughts can lead them to believe that maybe they’re not valid.