Windows 11 can now reply to your texts, as AI auto-replies arrive in Microsoft's Phone Link app

Windows 11's Phone Link app is getting an AI-powered feature that was spotted in testing earlier this year, but is now rolling out to everyone.

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If you need a short and succinct reply, these AI-generated messages could prove a useful little timesaver (Image Credit: Microsoft)

This is 'suggested replies' which provides exactly that - short potential replies to the texts you get, within Phone Link - and this functionality is rolling out now (so not everyone will have it just yet, but it's coming).

The replies are generated via AI (in the cloud, not on-device), and they will only appear for certain messages. Namely texts where the AI can actually get a handle on the conversation enough to be able to generate some possible responses.

If you've ever used Gmail and seen its suggested replies to emails, you'll get the idea here. They are very brief responses along the lines of 'sounds good' or 'yes, that's great' and so on.

Still, they can be convenient, even if you only use them as a starting point for a slightly lengthier subsequent reply.

Microsoft told Windows Latest that the new feature is currently rolling out, and in what might be a worrying turn of events for some, the suggested replies functionality is apparently on by default.

Seemingly you can choose to switch it off during Phone Link setup, though, and there's also a toggle to disable the suggested replies in the app's settings panel (under Features).

So, those worried about AI nosing into their messages have some recourse here, but it should be noted that Microsoft has made it clear that the cloud-based AI system may view your text messages - clearly it must do so to engineer replies - but it isn't trained on them.

Read more: Microsoft puts latest Windows 11 update on hold after admitting it has some nasty bugs