A recent Microsoft Edge AI feature helps users place open tabs into groups for improved management. Tab groups, introduced in Microsoft Edge in 2021, are a useful feature to improve the organization of tabs in the browser.
Most modern web browsers support tab groups. Until now, users had to create tab groups themselves.
Microsoft Edge users, for example, must right-click on a tab and select “add tab to new group” from the context menu to create a group. Tab groups can have custom names and colors to further improve identification.
Group Similar Tabs is a new AI feature added to Edge Stable. Microsoft has been testing this for some time in development versions of the browser.
The main idea behind this is to improve the creation of tab groups for the user. The process is automated when the feature is used, meaning you no longer need to manually create tab groups and place tabs into them.
To use the feature, select the tab action menu in the Microsoft Edge toolbar and select Group Similar Tabs (Preview) or Group Similar Tabs (Preview).
But Edge sends information about all open websites to a Microsoft server with this option. The AI then processes the request on the server and returns its suggestions after a while.
What Microsoft doesn't disclose is that the feature requires an active Internet connection and communication with the company's servers.
When you turn off your internet connection, Group Similar Tabs shows “Could not group your tabs”. In other words, the processing is done on Microsoft's servers, not locally.
Microsoft he said feature last year on the Windows Experience Blog:
“Productivity and organization go hand in hand. Yesterday, we announced automatic tab grouping in Edge, which uses artificial intelligence to group your tabs based on specific topics or categories. Just go to the tab icon on the top left and click to group similar tabs. Copilot will group your tabs, leaving your browser window and your mind less cluttered.”
As you can see in the paragraph above there is no word about data processing or privacy in the company announcement. The feature in Edge also provides no information. In other words, no one knows how the data is stored, processed and used.
Edge's (and Chrome's) automatic tab grouping features may seem useful, but users concerned about their privacy should use the manual mode.
