What you need to know
- An avid tech enthusiast and developer recently shared an interesting project featuring Microsoft's discontinued office assistant, Clippy.
- The project dubbed AI-Snip leverages Clippy's smarts, explaining obscure details captured in screenshots.
- The developer also claims the project can be used for translation or custom prompts.
It's barely been a week since Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff slammed Microsoft for reportedly disserving the AI industry while referring to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy. Now, the virtual assistant is seemingly back from the Microsoft Graveyard. In a surprising yet fun turn of events, an avid developer recently shared a project dubbed AI-Snip on Reddit.
According to Developer Yannik Keller:
"I found this to be super useful for everyday use. Anytime I do not understand anything, I just make a screenshot and get it explained. It can do other things as well such as translation or custom prompts."
Demo of GPT-4o as an Image to Text model that makes MS Clippy explain the screenshots you take. from r/OpenAI
The project has sparked interest on Reddit, with multiple users sharing nostalgic memories of the virtual office assistant. "My old heart jumps from joy... no, wait, that's too much jumping, stop it... stop..damn you again, Clippyyyyy," one user indicated. "It's a great idea," another user added. "I'm surprised Microsoft isn't promoting something fun like this."
The project is reminiscent of Google's Circle to Search feature on Android phones. The feature lets you search for anything on your Android phone without switching apps by simply circling, highlighting, scribbling, or tapping the area that sparked your interest. More details about the highlighted region will be presented in real time.
Perhaps more interestingly, Microsoft Edge also features a similar feature dubbed Circle to Copilot, which serves the same purpose as Google's Circle to Search (although the forthcoming Click-to-Do is even more powerful).
According to the developer, the easiest way to run AI-snip on your Windows device is to download the binary from the releases page. Tech-savvy users with vast Python knowledge could alternatively clone the repository and follow the step-by-step instructions highlighted in AI-Snip's repository in GitHub.
It's also possible to run AI-Snip on Linux. However, the developer indicates, "You will only be able to do one snip each time you run this program" because the operating system doesn't feature a uniform system tray like Windows.
Here are available hotkeys when leveraging AI-Snip on your PC:
- D: Toggles clippy (always starts on)
- C: Toggles if AI response is copied to clipboard (always starts off). This will also disable streaming, resulting in slower response times.
- E: Go into translation into english mode. Will also set clipboard on.
- L: Go into Latex mode. Toggles clippy off and clipboard on.
- T: Free prompt mode. Write your own prompt for the AI to answer.
- Q or Esc: Cancel your ongoing snip or close clippy (you may have to re-select the clippy window if you de-selected it).
Keller says AI-Snip is in explanation mode by default. As such, Clippy will pop up with an explanation, providing more insight and context regarding the section you snipped.
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