I’m just getting set up with the beta on a new Mac, and I’d like to voice my vote for being able to clearly disable the generative AI stuff.
One possibility might be to be able to select None for Provider and Model in the various AI settings tabs.
As it is, those setting are already slightly confusing. If I understand correctly, choosing one without setting it up might be equivalent to turning it off? I’m not sure. But being able to choose None or Disabled or something equivalent would make it more clear.
I agree about the visual clutter too. At first glance, it’s also unclear which tools are just using DT’s AI vs generative AI. For example, DT3’s See Also & Classify appears to have been relabeled to AI and given a new icon, but there’s also now sub-tabs for Tags and Graph there. As someone who doesn’t use generative AI, it’s unclear to me if any of those would use it (or need it).
I know a lot of people are eager to use generative AI, so it makes sense to include it.But I also think there a lot of people who are turned off by it (like me), and would like to be clear we’re not using it.
I know you have great help articles explaining the benefits of generative AI and how to use it in DT. But having clear on/off switches, and possibly removing the visual clutter would help a lot of those who don’t want to use it. (As it is, I tried searching the included both DT’s included help and the forum to try to figure out how to disable it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I only found this thread by searching Google).
One possibility might be to be able to select None for Provider and Model in the various AI settings tabs.
AI has no effect if nothing is set up, so why would you need to disable any setting or set something to None? If you never touch the AI settings, no AI functions will be operational.
For example, DT3’s See Also & Classify appears to have been relabeled to AI and given a new icon, but there’s also now sub-tabs for Tags and Graph there. As someone who doesn’t use generative AI, it’s unclear to me if any of those would use it (or need it).
That is our internal AI and inspectors that specifically use it.
If you’re using commercial AI, you must acquire and enter an API key. No key, no AI would work.
If you were using local AI, you’d need to explicitly set that up. That requires downloading an AI application, models, setting up a server endpoint, etc. Without all that, again no AI would work.
So the crux is: AI does not just work because there are AI settings. It is optional and requires your intervention to set it up.
I was also initially confused by the AI settings panel (Settings > AI > Chat). To me, it looked like the providers were enabled, and wasn’t clear that an API Key was required to actually enable them.
To make it clear that an AI provider will not work without an API Key, I’d suggest changing the layout of the preferences:
Place “API Key” right under Provider, and add a description explaining it is required to enable this provider.
When the API Key is blank, disable (dim) all other options for that provider.
I can see how that’s clear to people who have used or might want to use generative AI in other contexts, but it’s not immediately clear to those who haven’t or don’t want to.
I was assuming it was since it looked the same at DT3, but it still wasn’t clear on first glance.
Thanks for pointing out the part in the about AI in the Inspectors in the built-in help. I hadn’t thought to look there, because I had entered the help from the AI tab in the Settings window, which only seems to talk about generative AI settings.
Is the AI tab in the Settings window only about generative AI tools? If so, it might be helpful to label it as such. Especially since the AI tab on the Inspector panel doesn’t use generative AI. I think this added to the confusion about whether the settings had anything to do with it.
Again, I think this is probably clear to those who use those tools, but not to those who don’t.
I think this is where consistently labeling things would also help. Because DT’s AI does work without API keys or setup. It’s the generative AI that doesn’t.
To be clear, I trust you guys are working things out well with this, so I don’t have any worries! I just wanted to point out the confusing parts and offer suggestions.
Thanks for the suggestions. Development will have to assess this.
However, hiding parts of the interface and menu commands is noted but less likely to be implemented. If people say they don’t use automation or scripts, should we also hide the Scripts menu, commands in the Tools menu, and the Smart Rules section of the Navigate sidebar? Some people never edit documents directly in DEVONthink, so shouldn’t we also entirely remove the Format menu? The list could go on and on…
Having a complete and consistent interface is (1) easier for development to maintain and (2) easier to support. The latter is especially true since I most often receive reports with no visual information at all. While I do sometimes request screen captures, it’s usually easy enough to extrapolate information from the edition someone is running since the UI is consistent.
Yeah, hiding parts of the UI is problematic. It’s better to have it visible, accessible, but clearly indicated if it is enabled or not. Especially with AI, since people are wary about external AIs having access to their information.
Another UI option would be to mimic your own Settings > Sync panel. I think its two-column approach (Locations on the left, and Options for each location on the right) makes it very clear:
I for one would love to see the references to AI disappear from the UI. Whips saved some space and cognitive burden.
I see why that might cause issues in support. Otoh, Photoshop just hides less-used tools behind a single button that expands. Just one way of dealing with these things, not necessarily feasible in DT. Perhaps making AI UI elements unselectable if no LLM is configured is possible?
I hate this about all Adobe products. Especially when the tools are evolving so quickly. They’re trying to force users to do it in what they consider the better, new way. If you live in one end of the Adobe universe (editing video and audio) and occasionally have to fly over to another part of the universe (bitmap or vector editing) it’s frustrating to try to find commonly used tools that are now hidden and obfuscated while also having to constantly click through new-hotness generative options.
Never hide options please. Dim/grey them out maybe but never hide.
AI features are part of pro / server editions , so shouldn’t they be made invisible in standard edition similar to existing feature „hide features of higher editions“ ?
Those features are hidden if you’ve purchased a Standard license or extension and applied the seat to the machine. They are talking about hiding features that are available in the Pro and Server editions.
What I mean is that you could borrow that approach and apply it to „ai features“ across all editions (they should be disabled/hidden anyways in standard?) but you could give the off switch to users of higher editions wishing to turn off display of those features in the UI.
I like the idea of greying out the menu options if no external AI has been set up. Then it’s clear to the user that these menu options can’t be used, it’s less visually cluttered, and it doesn’t cause DT developers a headache trying to work out how to remove lots of menu items for a subset of users
The next release will reorder the pane slightly but there’s already such a description.
This will only affect the Model popup, the context window is already disabled in case of commercial providers and all other settings are global in this pane.
