#copilot

[blogquantumreality]

If anyone out there is not sure if the above commands are safe to use, there are some alternative methods outlined on ElevenForums. Note that for some incredibly asinine reason, Microsoft linked Secure DNS with Copilot so if you disable Copilot it knocks out Secure DNS.

Yes, this is rank bullshit and another reason among many to try and test-drive (and long-term, switch to) Linux if you can, but that's a step too far for some folks and that is totally understandable.

For right now, correcting the worst excesses of Microsoft's enshittification remains the goal.

A boy can dream, can't he?

[leveragehunters]

CoPilot in MS Word

I opened Word yesterday to discover that it now contains CoPilot. It follows you as you type and if you have a personal Microsoft 365 account, you can't turn it off. You will be given 60 AI credits per month and you can't opt out of it.

The only way to banish it is to revert to an earlier version of Office. There is lot of conflicting information and overly complex guides out there, so I thought I'd share the simplest way I found.

How to revert back to an old version of Office that does not have CoPilot

This is fairly simple, thankfully, presuming everything is in the default locations. If not you'll need to adjust the below for where you have things saved.

Click the Windows Button and S to bring up the search box, then type cmd. It will bring up the command prompt as an option. Run it as an administrator.

Paste this into the box at the cursor: cd "\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun"

Hit Enter

Then paste this into the box at the cursor: officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17726.20160

Hit enter and wait while it downloads and installs.

VERY IMPORTANT. Once it's done, open Word, go to File, Account (bottom left), and you'll see a box on the right that says Microsoft 365 updates. Click the box and change the drop down to Disable Updates.

This will roll you back to build 17726.20160, from July 2024, which does not have CoPilot, and prevent it from being installed.

If you want a different build, you can see them all listed here. You will need to change the 17726.20160 at step 4 to whatever build number you want.

This is not a perfect fix, because while it removes CoPilot, it also stops you receiving security updates and bug fixes.

Switching from Office to LibreOffice

At this point, I'm giving up on Microsoft Office/Word. After trying a few different options, I've switched to LibreOffice.

You can download it here for free: https://www.libreoffice.org/

If you like the look of Word, these tutorials show you how to get that look:

www.howtogeek.com/788591/how-to-make-libreoffice-look-like-microsoft-office/

www.debugpoint.com/libreoffice-like-microsoft-office/

If you've been using Word for awhile, chances are you have a significant custom dictionary. You can add it to LibreOffice following these steps.

First, get your dictionary from Microsoft

Go to Manage your Microsoft 365 account: account.microsoft.com.

One you're logged in, scroll down to Privacy, click it and go to the Privacy dashboard.

Scroll down to Spelling and Text. Click into it and scroll past all the words to download your custom dictionary. It will save it as a CSV file.

Open the file you just downloaded and copy the words.

Open Notepad and paste in the words. Save it as a text file and give it a meaningful name (I went with FromWord).

Next, add it to LibreOffice

Open LibreOffice.

Go to Tools in the menu bar, then Options. It will open a new window.

Find Languages and Locales in the left menu, click it, then click on Writing aids.

You'll see User-defined dictionaries. Click New to the right of the box and give it a meaningful name (mine is FromWord).

Hit Apply, then Okay, then exit LibreOffice.

Open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\wordbook and you will see the new dictionary you created. (If you can't see the AppData folder, you will need to show hidden files by ticking the box in the View menu.)

Open it in Notepad by right clicking and choosing 'open with', then pick Notepad from the options.

Open the text file you created at step 5 in 'get your dictionary from Microsoft', copy the words and paste them into your new custom dictionary UNDER the dotted line.

Save and close.

Reopen LibreOffice. Go to Tools, Options, Languages and Locales, Writing aids and make sure the box next to the new dictionary is ticked.

If you use LIbreOffice on multiple machines, you'll need to do this for each machine.

Please note: this worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, check you've followed each step correctly, and try restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work, I can't provide tech support (sorry).

[copperbadge]

Get Thee Behind Me

Love how Microsoft just decided to put a preview of Copilot AI on my computer without telling me.

The only reason I noticed is that I use the lower-right-hand status bar in Windows fairly frequently and saw a weird little rainbow that said "Pre", and when I clicked on it a whole-ass Copilot window came up. Copilot is the host body for Microsoft Recall as well, the creepy parasite that Microsoft had to roll back after an uproar over the idea of it watching every single thing you do on your computer.

While I could search the internet for ways to turn it off, I do appreciate irony of making apps I don't want tell me how to kill them. So I asked it how to remove it from my computer and whaddaya know, it's as easy as Start > Settings > Personalization > Taskbar to switch it off. And now you know too!

Keep an eye on your status bar, I guess.

[sekhithefops]

How to Kill Microsoft's AI "Helper" Copilot WITHOUT Screwing With Your Registry!

Hey guys, so as I'm sure a lot of us are aware, Microsoft pulled some dickery recently and forced some Abominable Intelligence onto our devices in the form of its "helper" program, Copilot. Something none of us wanted or asked for but Microsoft is gonna do anyways because I'm pretty sure someone there gets off on this.

Unfortunately, Microsoft offered no ways to opt out of the little bastard or turn it off (unless you're in the EU where EU Privacy Laws force them to do so.) For those of us in the United Corporations of America, we're stuck... or are we?

Today while perusing Bluesky, one of the many Twitter-likes that appeared after Musk began burning Twitter to the ground so he could dance in the ashes, I came across this post from a gentleman called Nash:

Intrigued, I decided to give this a go, and lo and behold it worked exactly as described!

We can't remove Copilot, Microsoft made sure that was riveted and soldered into place... but we can cripple it!

Simply put, Microsoft Edge. Normally Windows will prevent you from uninstalling Edge using the Add/Remove Programs function saying that it needs Edge to operate properly (it doesn't, its lying) but Geek Uninstaller overrules that and rips the sucker out regardless of what it says!

I uninstalled Edge using it, rebooted my PC, and lo and behold Copilot was sitting in the corner with blank eyes and drool running down it's cheeks, still there but dead to the world!

Now do bear in mind this will have a little knock on effect. Widgets also rely on Edge, so those will stop functioning as well.

Before:

After:

But I can still check the news and weather using an internet browser so its a small price to pay to be rid of Microsoft's spyware-masquerading-as-a-helper Copilot.

But yes, this is the link for Geek Uninstaller:

Run it, select "Force Uninstall" For anything that says "Edge," reboot your PC, and enjoy having a copy of Windows without Microsoft's intrusive trash! :D

UPDATE: I saw this on someone's tags and I felt I should say this as I work remotely too. If you have a computer you use for work, absolutely 100% make sure you consult with your management and/or your IT team BEFORE you do this. If they say don't do it, there's likely a reason.

[straycatj]

家主がせいせいAIでオレとでしを出してみようと思ったら

オレのかわりにぱんがーさんみたいなシロネコが出てきたのです

My landlady has tried to make a picture of me and my apprentice, then it makes cats like my apprentice and a white cat like Ms.Pangur

[kawaoneechan]

"They shoved Copilot into my face so I might as well use it."

You absolute fool. You're just telling them that you're fine with having shit features forced onto you. Features that you already knew perfectly well were shit, you knew why they're shit, you know why they'll never improve, and you're using it to get some information about the Marlett system font that Copilot just grabbed from Wikipedia?

"They shoved it into my face so I might as well use it" is sending exactly the wrong message. And you already know they are listening.

[chamiryokuroi]

I hate copilot (AI tool) so much, personally I think it makes developers lazy and worse at logical thinking.

We are working on an UI application that is mocking service call responses for local testing with the use of MSW.

There were some changes done to the service calls that would require updates on the MSW mocking, but instead of looking at the MSW documentation to figure out how to solve that, my coworker asked copilot.

Did it gave him a code that fixed the issue? Yes, but when I asked my coworker how it fixed it he had no idea because a) he doesn’t know MSW, b) he didn’t know what was the issue to begin with.

I did the MSW configuration myself, I read the documentation and I immediately knew what was needed to fix the issue but I wanted my coworker to do it himself so he would get familiarized with MSW so he could fix issues in the future, instead he used AI to solve something without actually understanding neither the issue or the solution.

And this is exactly why I refuse to use AI/Copilot.

[ralfmaximus]

Shane Jones, the AI engineering lead at Microsoft who initially raised concerns about the AI, has spent months testing Copilot Designer, the AI image generator that Microsoft debuted in March 2023, powered by OpenAI’s technology. Like with OpenAI’s DALL-E, users enter text prompts to create pictures. Creativity is encouraged to run wild. But since Jones began actively testing the product for vulnerabilities in December, a practice known as red-teaming, he saw the tool generate images that ran far afoul of Microsoft’s oft-cited responsible AI principles.

Copilot was happily generating realistic images of children gunning each other down, and bloody car accidents. Also, copilot appears to insert naked women into scenes without being prompted.

Jones was so alarmed by his experience that he started internally reporting his findings in December. While the company acknowledged his concerns, it was unwilling to take the product off the market.

Lovely! Copilot is still up, but now rejects specific search terms and flags creepy prompts for repeated offenses, eventually suspending your account.

However, a persistent & dedicated user can still trick Copilot into generating violent (and potentially illegal) imagery.

Yiiiikes. Imagine you're a journalist investigating AI, testing out some of the prompts reported by your source. And you get arrested for accidentally generating child pornography, because Microsoft is monitoring everything you do with it?

Good thing Microsoft is putting a Copilot button on keyboards!

[tooth-com]

Genuine question but does post-crash Curly have an eyelid??

Sure there’s a whole meaning about now he’s forced to watch the consequences of his actions of letting Jimmy run around the ship after previously ignoring it and turning a blind eye (see what I did there). Now that he’s made a choice the game makes damn sure he sticks with it.

There is nothing left for him to do but watch what he has allowed to happen because his eye is the only thing he can really use on his own. He’s now a spectator in his own body, forced by Jimmy to take the pills, forced by Jimmy to eat his own flesh and forced by him to stay alive. Jimmy is the captain now and makes almost every choice for him, whether he wants that or not. The monster he allowed or just down right ignored (whether or not Curly could’ve actually done anything is actually difficult to say because of the way Pony express is and also the limited options on the ship. Be 100 percent aware I don’t completely blame curly in the slightest!!!) is now his saviour of sorts. And he has to live with the fact that he is only alive because Jimmy let him. That all he can do is watch the man that massacred his friends and caused their deaths save his life. You’re saved by the people you save.

But also his eye must be fucking dry?? Like eyeballs are no joke they gotta stay moist and if you don’t blink bacteria will start climbing in there and rooting around as they do after like a few weeks let alone a few days

ALSO THIS IS A VIDEO GAME SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF AND ALL THAT STUFF !!!!

(Also reached my first 100 likes a couple days ago!! Thank you guys so much hehe)

[breakfastteatime]

What the FUCK is Copilot doing in MY WORD DOCUMENT?! No, I do not want to draft with Copilot!

[nixcraft]

Classic Windows apps like Paint and Notepad are also getting LLM (Generative AI) support. There is no reason whatsoever that Notepad should do more than text editing. Microsoft has gone crazy with these tools. Of course, as part of these tools, your text in Notepad is sent to Microsoft under the name of Generative AI, which then sells it to the highest bidder. I'm so sick of Microsoft messing around with working tool and yes, you need stupid copilot subscription called "Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Subscribers" for Notepad. It is pain now. So, stick with FLOSS tools and OS and avoid this madness. Keep your data safe.

You need stupid AI credits to use basic tools.

In other words, you now need AI credits to use basic tools like Notepad and Paint. It's part of their offering called 'Microsoft 365 Personal and Family' or 'Copilot Pro'. These tools come with 'Content Filtering,' and only MS-approved topics or images can be created with their shity AI that used stolen data from all over the web. Read for yourself: Isn't AI wonderful? Artists and authors don't get paid, now you've added censorship, and the best part you need to pay for it!

GTFO, Microsoft.

[thegoodmorningman]

Good Morning!!! Believe in your dreams!!!

[hotcinnamonsunset]

everywhere i go, it haunts me

[blue-ten]

Windows 11 and the Last Straw

Bit of a rant coming up. TL;DR I'm tired of Microsoft, so I'm moving to Linux. After Microsoft's announcement of "Recall" and their plans to further push Copilot as some kind of defining feature of the OS, I'm finally done. I feel like that frog in the boiling water analogy, but I'm noticing the bubbles starting to form and it's time to hop out.

The corporate tech sector recently has been such a disaster full of blind bandwagon hopping (NFTs, ethically dubious "AI" datasets trained on artwork scraped off the net, and creative apps trying to incorporate features that feed off of those datasets). Each and every time it feels like insult to injury toward the arts in general. The out of touch CEOs and tech billionaires behind all this don't understand art, they don't value art, and they never will.

Thankfully, I have a choice. I don't have to let Microsoft feature-creep corporate spyware into my PC. I don't have to let them waste space and CPU cycles on a glorified chatbot that wants me to press the "make art" button. I'm moving to Linux, and I've been inadvertently prepping myself to do it for over a decade now.

I like testing out software: operating systems, web apps, anything really, but especially art programs. Over the years, the open-source community has passionately and tirelessly developed projects like Krita, Inkscape, and Blender into powerhouses that can actually compete in their spaces. All for free, for artists who just want to make things. These are people, real human beings, that care about art and creativity. And every step of the way while Microsoft et al began rotting from the inside, FOSS flourished and only got better. They've more than earned trust from me.

I'm not announcing my move to Linux just to be dramatic and stick it to the man (although it does feel cathartic, haha). I'm going to be using Krita, Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender for all my art once I make the leap, and I'm going to share my experiences here! Maybe it'll help other artists in the long run! I'm honestly excited about it. I worked on the most recent page of Everblue entirely in Krita, and it was a dream how well it worked for me.

Addendum: I'm aware that Microsoft says things like, "Copilot is optional," "Recall is offline, it doesn't upload or harvest your data," "You can turn all these things off." Uh-huh. All that is only true until it isn't. One day Microsoft will take the user's choice away like they've done so many times before. Fool me once, etc.

[wolveria]

The way I wanted to cause physical violence when I opened a word doc and found AI forced onto the literal page

It might take a few restarts of word, but you CAN get rid of it by going to File > Options > Copilot