New Update Microsoft 365 adds AI to Office: What is ai.exe and AIMgr.exe in Task Manager?

Ink · Apr 11, 2023

Informational post regarding new processes added to Microsoft 365 Office users. Applies to Windows 11, Windows 10.

An unknown Microsoft 365 update added “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Host” to Windows 11 and 10, in addition to an AI manager.

You’ll notice the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Host when you expand Microsoft Word or other Office apps in Task Manager. The AI Host is being added to all installations of Windows via Microsoft Office updates. If you don’t see it now, you’ll probably get it in a future update.

So what’s going on, and why do you have AI.exe in your Task Manager processes list?

Recent changes to Microsoft Office desktop apps on Windows have resulted in local Artificial Intelligence (AI) being moved out of the process.

Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint now communicate with a separate program, ai.exe, to perform most local AI functions. The critical binaries associated with local AI in Microsoft Office desktop apps on Windows include aitrxdll, ai.exe, ai.dll, mlg.dll, and aimgr.exe.

The aitrxdll transceiver library is loaded by Office desktop apps to transmit inputs to and receive outputs from ai.exe, which is responsible for hosting ai.dll. The latter receives inputs from aitrxdll and processes them through ai.dll to produce outputs, which are then transmitted back to aitrxdll in the Office desktop app.

Meanwhile, mlg.dll is a natural language processing library that contains code created by Microsoft’s Machine Learning Group (MLG). Aimgr.exe is a manager executable used to manage various instances of ai.exe across Office desktop apps.

These changes have significant implications for the future of local AI in Microsoft Office desktop apps on Windows.

We believe these changes may be related to powering Microsoft 365 Copilot integration. The software giant has not publicly acknowledged or documented this change, causing concerns among privacy advocates and users alike.