Turning to how it's implemented, we can confirm that Cocreator runs almost flawlessly. Simply hit the button, give it your prompt, and go. It only takes a few seconds to generate the three image variants. The only downside is its 50-credit limit, but we assume that's just a limit for this Preview build.

Grant says she has made dozens of requests for body camera footage in Massachusetts – mostly for officer-involved shootings.

Most people take pictures on their phones, and most phones these days can blur backgrounds automatically. But if it's an old photo on your PC that hasn't already had its background blurred, or if it's coming from a camera, this Photos feature might come in handy.

“If it is the case that your local police department simply shrugs off public records requests or ignores the press when they want information about a shooting or an incident captured by a body-worn camera, that’s a problem with your local democracy,” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said.

Annemarie Grant said she knows firsthand the transparency that body camera footage can offer in situations where law enforcement officials are slow to provide answers.

“If there’s a shooting, if the police are accused of mistreating someone, and we suspect there’s body-worn camera footage of that event, the police are in a really difficult spot in terms of denying the public access to that information and then simultaneously saying that the body-worn camera program serves public accountability and transparency,” Crockford said. “Because if they’re only releasing the footage in cases where the video reflects well on the police, then that’s really not what the program is all about.”

“While this case was found to be Insufficient Evidence by the Board, the CRB noted that the body-worn camera referenced in the police report as being activated by one of the officers on scene was not available when requested during the OPAT investigation,” reads the decision. “This is concerning to the CRB, but was not a factor in this particular disposition.”

If you still can't access these features after joining the Insider Programme and updating Windows, try the following fix (via TroubleChute):

The selected image will now be displayed in the Paint canvas. If none of the three images are to your liking, try making your prompt more descriptive and specific. Just be aware that each creation uses a credit, and you can see how many you have left to the left of the "Create" button - you get 50 credits by default.

So, when we added just one (gameplay) video and told it to play the video from start to finish with the auto composer's style and music changes, you can imagine how disappointed we were with the result. But we weren't using it as intended. This tool isn't for in-clip editing; it's for piecing different clips together.

The Asus Zenbook Duo is a promising dual screen PC, but its novel form factor introduces some growing pains along the way.

QUINCY, Mass. — Amid the 2020 police reform movement in Massachusetts, state leaders promised body camera footage would provide the public with more transparency.

25 Investigates found that at least 60 local police departments – from Boston to Leominster, to Salem – have a body camera program up and running as of January 2024.

Holmes said he spoke with state police recently and heard from senior leadership that officers are feeling “better protected” with the advent of body cameras.

Family members aren’t always guaranteed access to body camera footage: in 2020, a Boston police reform task force recommended “unfettered access to BWC footage” for next-of-kin or recorded individuals. But by 2021, BPD had not adopted that recommendation.

Boston police detective Jeffrey Lopes – president of MAMLEO, the union that represents about 600 minority law enforcement officers in Massachusetts – said valid reasons to withhold or redact footage include the need to protect the privacy of victims and witnesses.

Kade Crockford, with the ACLU, said police must do a better job explaining why a video’s release may imperil a criminal investigation.

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“We should be holding police department accountable,” Lopes said. “There should be no reason why if something can be released, it’s not released. If you pick and choose, people will start to think you’re trying to hide something.”

“There’s a lot of factors as to where the event took place, which jurisdiction, and then the makeup of the police department and the decisions made, whether it’s released or not,” Fowler said.

We didn’t receive any response to the two other requests, including one for “the first recorded interaction any trooper had” in December.

25 Investigates also found at least a dozen towns provided a pay boost or extra vacation day to officers who agreed to a body camera program: from a 1% pay increase in Foxboro, an extra holiday day in Wellfleet, to a $1,200 annual stipend in Great Barrington.

All in all, this should be a great addition to Windows, its main benefit being that those who want to use AI to generate images will no longer have to do so via their browser (which can add extra steps such as downloading the image once created).

But transparency advocate Annemarie Grant of Quincy said it is time for Massachusetts to update that report and provide more detailed guidance on the release of body camera footage.

The 27-page report briefly discusses the release of body camera footage – it says in part that the release of footage involving an “active criminal investigation or prosecution” should be governed under the public records law.

At least 20 other police departments either requested a fee or said it would be too costly and time-consuming to go back and individually review and redact all released footage. Another 17 police departments said they did not receive any public records requests for body camera footage in 2023.

“He was killed by law enforcement in Reno, Nevada, during a mental health crisis,” Grant told Investigative Reporter Ted Daniel. “Hogtied and asphyxiated to death.”

Grant has fought for better public access to body camera video in Massachusetts and elsewhere since 2015 when her brother Thomas Purdy died in a Reno, Nevada jail.

25 Investigates sent out public records requests to 316 local police departments statewide – seeking copies of policies, stipends paid to officers, storage costs, as well as body camera footage released to the public in 2023. As of Monday, about 55% of police departments responded to 25 Investigates’ public records requests sent in early January.

25 Investigates found police officers are also facing other mounting costs and challenges: to the use of AI tools to blur faces, to the security of in-house servers storing body camera footage, to the cost of dealing with body camera footage requests from car insurance companies.

Paint's Cocreator feature uses OpenAI's Dall-E text-to-image model, so Cocreator's quality is just as good as Dall-E's quality. When we tried it out, we found it to do a pretty good job (we were particularly impressed by its anime rendition of "a fat rat next to a cat in a cowboy hat"). With many images, it's quite clear that they're AI-generated, but this tech should only improve over time.

That story played out in other towns too: police departments in Wilmington and Stow failed to come to agreement with their police unions – a key requirement needed to receive any funding from the state.

And when you use it as intended, it works great. It's straightforward enough to use and provides enough handholding to be worth its salt as a quality-of-life improvement for simple video edits. Just don't expect it to be up to the standard of manual editing.

With Microsoft helping spearhead the push towards the age of what Intel calls the "AI PC", there are several new in-app AI features to tuck into, providing you're on the most bleeding-edge Windows 11 build.

Police agencies can decline to release records that could jeopardize an investigation under Massachusetts’ open records law – if law enforcement officials are clear about how the release could hurt prosecution.

On Beacon Hill, Rep. Russell Holmes said he supports the expansion of body cameras by police as well as correctional officers.

Meanwhile, police officers from Salisbury to Taunton told 25 Investigates they want a uniform, more detailed policy on the release of footage.

Grant said she wants more oversight over whether police officers are turning on body cameras and ensuring they are filming without obstructing the view.

25 Investigates found instances where Boston’s Civilian Review Board found officers did not keep their body-worn cameras on for the entirety of interactions with the public.

Grant provided 25 Investigates with a breakdown of nearly 30 public records requests she made from 2020 through 2022 – including for incidents where BPD officers used firearms or Tasers.

Still – 25 Investigates has found instances where police have released footage involving some open cases, but not others.

Microsoft has added AI functionality to its Snipping Tool that allows you to select and copy text from the portion of the screen that you screenshot and "snip". It can also automatically redact sensitive information such as email addresses or redact text that you manually select.

Microsoft is still rolling out some of these exciting AI-powered features, so that we can expect some changes along the way. But if you're looking to get a head start and try them out right now, we've tested all these features, given you the low-down on how to use them, and have given our assessment on whether they're worth your time.

“There’s still complaints against the police, but now they can go back to that moment and refer back to that moment and correct officers if there is something inappropriate, but then also communicate back to the public if they feel like the officers, were in line with what they did or said,” Holmes said.

Holmes added: “It should be the same when you think you’re right on an issue and when it might be a concern for the community, it should be the same standard operating procedures, in any incident.”

If you have an old laptop lying around, use these lightweight operating systems to have it running buttery smooth again.

We must admit, that we got ClipChamp's auto-compose feature wrong when we first tried it. You see, it's designed to take lots of different media and create a montage or slideshow that gives off a specific kind of vibe based on your preferences.

BPD spokesperson John Boyle said he’s working on a response to 25 Investigates’ questions about apparent inconsistencies in the release of body-worn camera footage.

Other police officers are calling for the state to provide clarity on tough issues facing local departments – including how to handle requests by domestic abusers, how to decide whether to blur faces of uninvolved parties, and whether there’s a need for a statewide office to store and release body camera footage instead.

Some police departments used in-house servers to store footage, while others use cloud servers that can cost below $1,000 a year.

Storage of body camera footage – along with bills for cameras themselves – can also be particularly costly for police departments: Southborough’s Select Board in 2022 approved the use of $38,922 in pandemic relief funds for “police body camera data storage and warranties.”

But on Monday an email to 25 Investigates, Groveland Lt. Heather Riley said: “The Police Union shut it down. We do not have body cameras.”

Microsoft Copilot is intended to be "your everyday AI companion", but Microsoft clearly thinks some AI features will do better as separate add-on features embedded inside applications such as MS Paint and Photos. You can do so from inside the relevant Microsoft applications rather than telling Copilot what to do to launch these new AI features.

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The decision said: “As seen in the body camera footage, the officer should have kept his body-worn camera on until completely exiting the residence. The CRB further recommends that the officer keeps their body-worn camera on for the duration of the interaction and until they leave the residence.”

Massachusetts state police lawyers said two of the videos were from cases still in court and releasing them could “prejudice the possibility of effective law enforcement.”

Once you're updated to Windows 11 23H2, you might have access to the latest AI features, depending on whether Microsoft has rolled it out to your demographic or region.

ACLU’s Crockford said Massachusetts should consider tasking the job of storing body camera footage to a statewide office instead.

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Like with the other AI tools on this list, in our testing, we found the background blur tool in Photos to work flawlessly. It didn't pick up the entire background at first, so we had to use the "Selection brush" tool to fill the rest in, but it was easy enough to do, and once we did that, it worked well.

In one case, the board unanimously voted to not sustain an alleged violation of departmental policy during an Oct. 17, 2022 incident.

While Microsoft has started launching its Copilot AI assistant for many Windows 11 users, the tech giant has also started testing other AI-driven features in some of its Windows 11 apps.

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That happened for two of her requests in 2022, for one request in 2021 and another in 2020. In two other cases, police did not indicate whether body camera footage existed.

“I believe that anytime there’s an interaction between police and community, between corrections officer and those that are incarcerated, I think it’s just always good for the public to be able to look back and for police to look back at any activity that’s happening,” he said.

This AI text selection and redaction functionality is a big step in the right direction for Microsoft. Other operating systems (iOS, for example) have in-photo text-selection capabilities, so it's great that Windows 11 is catching up in this regard.

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To gain access to these latest in-application Microsoft AI features, you must be on Windows 11 build 23H2 and ensure you're set up to receive all the latest updates. This should let you access Microsoft Copilot and other AI features.

We think the new AI features in the Snipping Tool will be great, primarily for a couple of use cases. First, for people looking to quickly snap, snip, and share text without risking sharing sensitive contact info. And second, for people looking to copy text from inside software that has restricted the ability to do so.

Microsoft Cocreator is a new AI feature in Paint that allows you to use generative AI to create pictures in various styles based on your descriptions.

We already have the AI Hub listing apps that leverage AI in the Microsoft Store, but in the latest 23H2 Windows 11 build (for some users), Microsoft has added AI features to some of its own applications.

An anonymous complaint to the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency said a police officer allegedly entered a home “without permission and intimidated them.”

If you still don't have access, try participating in the Windows Insider Program by navigating to Start -> Settings -> Windows Update -> Windows Insider Programme and follow the on-screen instructions.

If you're looking to throw together a quick montage, it's great. If you want something more, stick to doing it manually.

In another 2022 incident, a complainant alleged a BPD officer in an unmarked vehicle “abused power and treated them disrespectfully by throwing a ticket at them.”

But it's not only catching up, it's implementing these features very well. The text selection and redaction tools are intuitive and easy to use, and in our testing, they worked flawlessly.

“I’ve signed on to several pieces of legislation regarding, body camera footage,” he said. “I believe they’re going to all come together as one, because we’re going to look to take ideas from all the different pieces, and we’re hoping to get that done and over the finish line this year.”

For example: Boston police have not released body-worn camera footage of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s police driver crashing into another car in Roslindale last year.

Microsoft's new "auto compose" feature in ClipChamp uses AI to create montages and short videos with the media you feed into it.

Crockford with the ACLU said the question of whether body cameras can improve transparency hinges on how police respond to requests for body camera footage of alleged police misconduct.

Grant said another issue is particularly troubling: instances where she learns that body camera footage does not exist for a particular incident.

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“I think we just have to realize that in 2024, we’re going to have to spend money for quality service to the public,” Lopes said.

Overall, 18 police departments provided body camera footage to 25 Investigates without an additional cost or lengthy wait.

But years later, 25 Investigates finds Massachusetts still does not release body camera footage in a consistent or timely manner.

“Right now, there’s so much inconsistency,” Salisbury Police Chief Tom Fowler said. “I think some chiefs may be afraid to release it, not knowing the impact of releasing it.”

Polysoft has reversed-engineered the Mac Studios' removable SSD and created its own replacement called the Studio Drive.

We expect this feature to be most useful for only a few people, this being those who want to throw a quick edit onto more professional photos, such as product photos or old photos.

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Grant received video footage showing her brother hogtied for over 30 minutes. Her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and received a $100,000 settlement.

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“It’s not always the case that the existence of a criminal case or a prosecution precludes the release of that information,” Crockford said.

Lopes said police departments are increasingly finding that body cameras can help clear officers of wrongdoing – while also providing transparency the public wants.

Microsoft has baked AI functionality into its Photos app that allows you to blur the background of images. It uses AI to detect the background area, but you can manually adjust this with the brush tool and adjust the intensity of the background blur with the slider.

Since then, the state has announced over $10 million in grants to launch body camera programs in more than 110 police departments.

But Boston has released other body-worn camera footage - including video of the car crash involving former Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara.