Deepin Linux AI features challenge Windows Copilot with programming assistant and AI photo editing

Deepin Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution known for its devilish good looks and user-friendliness. Now, trying to reach the cutting edge of the latest operating system trends, the developers of Deepin Linux announced that they have started integrating AI features into the desktop environment and its accompanying apps.

While Deepin Linux previously teased UOS AI, which appears to be an interface to access other LLMs and AI models to help users manage mail, browse the web, and do generative AI tasks, the newly-integrated AI features are much less ambitious. The AI integration comes in two flavours — an AI coding assistant and an AI-powered image editor plugin.

The Image Viewer AI Plugin is available from the Deepin App Store, and it comes with features including background blur and removal, image upscaling, colourising, and filter-like conversions, with options like sketch and comic looks.

Deepin's blog post about the AI image editing tools showcases some example images, and it's safe to say that some features, like the background removal and image colourising, generate much better results than others. The background blur feature seems to do a particularly bad job in the example portrait of the child with the cap.

The AI coding assistant arrived in deepin-IDE (integrated development environment). Deepin-IDE is available from the Deepin App Store, and it aims to fulfil much of the same purpose as GitHub's Copilot, completing lines of code, suggesting changes, or simply writing code for the developer, while also acting as the development environment itself.

In May 2023, Microsoft made Bing Chat (and thus ChatGPT) available to Windows 11 users with the addition of the Copilot feature to the operating system.

To try these features, you need to download Deepin Linux or install DDE (Deepin Desktop Environment) on a Debian-based distribution. Deepin Linux will get more AI integrations in the near future — check out the YouTube channel for more information about those additions.

Buy a Linux Commands Line Desk Mat, or grab a Valve Steam Deck, which runs a custom version of Arch Linux on Amazon.