You can't turn off Copilot in the web versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint

support.microsoft.com

102 points by artbristol 9 hours ago


normalaccess - 6 hours ago

That's because AIs can't survive by eating their own output. The only solution they know to ward off model collapse is more human input. They need you to use AI to feed the beast. And if it's built into your office apps, they get that data for free.

That's part of why every service and system are getting integrations, It's not for us it's for data harvesting.

In the end that's what "Windows Recall" will be used for. Access to every moment of every user for every app... Can you imagine the training data that would provide? An AI that could run any program ever created.

jandrese - 7 hours ago

I switched entirely to Libreoffice a few years ago and am still waiting to slam into that "this feature is only found in real MS Office" wall that everybody told me was coming.

I don't think I'm going to switch back over OneDrive or Copilot integration.

rschiavone - 7 hours ago

Feature so good you can't turn it off, so they can show in their internal metrics 100% adoption

JohnFen - 7 hours ago

It really does seem like Microsoft is intentionally making the lives of their users difficult, like they're trying to win some sort of malevolent contest.

antiloper - 6 hours ago

Copilot is the most incompetent AI tool I've ever used, which is bizarre since you'd think with the Microsoft/OpenAI partnership they'd make it so that Copilot uses the ChatGPT model.

It's most egregious on Azure, which has a copilot button on every page, and anytime I try to ask it about a precise configuration question for a resource, it NEVER answers correctly. So you have to search on whatever set of microsoft Q&A platforms, stackoverflow questions, and github issues/discussions to maybe find an answer like in the prehistory of 2020.

MisterKent - 8 hours ago

Try going to OneDrive to see your stuff if you want to be really annoyed.

dgan - 7 hours ago

You also cant disable the stupid "Pin Copilote" in teams, even if the company doesnt actyally have copilote

Just regular agressivness from an agressive company

profsummergig - 5 hours ago

I used to go to office.com to use web versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

Imagine my pleasant surprise (/s) when recently I went there, and the icons for these apps had vanished. Instead there was a giant gaping textbox for Copilot. A minute or so of staring at it, and I noticed a "Create" link on the left. That led to a page that invited me to do various things (e.g. "create a presentation", presumably with the web version of PowerPoint). The icons were still missing though.

Also notable: My work-issued Windows computer has Copilot, and Copilot 365. I have no idea which does what, and what's the difference between the two.

mainecoder - 7 hours ago

please can we have a no AI button perhaps with regulation even when using AI if someone does not want it temporarily it can be toggled off but they need AI was used by X % of users and millions of times metrics for promo so NO

bgwalter - 7 hours ago

Inundate Microsoft Support with questions how to turn off Clippy Clanker until they stop. They did remove the original Clippy after a while.

more_corn - 7 hours ago

We should start calling it “the hallucinator” Can you imagine how this is going to look when the first excel hallucinations start cropping up?

vee-kay - 7 hours ago

And we don't even need to wait till Copilot starts serving us popup ads.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2633816/giant-ai-ads-are-com...

SilverElfin - 7 hours ago

Anticompetitive bundling. We need new laws to protect fair competition.

theturtle - 3 hours ago

[dead]

Citizen_Lame - 8 hours ago

[flagged]

rtjahsgT - 7 hours ago

The detrimental influence of "Satya" (why do people like Bibi and Satya always have the cute names for sympathy?) continues. He is a horrible person:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...

Maybe Stephen Miller should take look at deportation.