After spending more than an hour on the phone with Microsoft Support, I have learned:
1. It is impossible to disable Copilot in OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint, or Windows itself.
2. It will not become possible to do so for another month AT THE EARLIEST.
(1/?)
1. It is impossible to disable Copilot in OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint, or Windows itself.
2. It will not become possible to do so for another month AT THE EARLIEST.
(1/?)
Reposted from
Kathryn Tewson
Anyone know how to disable Copilot in OneNote? There's no tickybox for it in the "Options" page, I already turned off "online experiences" or whatever, and when I tried uninstalling the Copilot app, the only change seems to be that I no longer have an "uninstall" option on the Copilot app.
Comments
That you never, ever want to do that again, you should get some award and possibly some compensation?
Can you get owned-not-leased copies of Word and disable talking to the net entirely for the app? Or does that only work for the version I bought for my Mac? (& then I zipped the update nagware.)
At least with Edge you can (ineffectually) complain to the same company that leaks data through the OS and office app suite.
ProTip: They don't care.
They want to show the c-suite they have 10 trillion AI installs to prove that the AI is the best thing, even if customers are actively trying to break the AI components to avoid lawsuits.
What concerns me is that every instance of a piece of information getting out of your systems when you're HIPAA related is $100,000 or 6 months jail.
That shit adds up *Quick*
I don’t know if you’re making things up, or you’re gullible to repeat things other people made up, but HIPAA is not a criminal law—it cannot carry any jail time. Period.
What is your source to the contrary?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1320d-6
These were things like phone numbers, names, DoB, and addresses.
EACH instance of information getting out? 100 grand fine.
1/2
That's 2 pieces of information for 10k clients.
Thats... A *lot* of money. And the company will likely lose all rights to sell insurance.
Granted, I'm not sure if it's each piece or each 2/3
Real bad.
Bankrupt a company bad.
Anyway, good luck in your search for an alternate office suite!
This makes people v mad
pgfplots would be nice too, but I don't want to be greedy
https://pandoc.org/
Plus it is super fucking annoying to have the little copilot icon hanging around making suggestions all the time.
(penalties for wilfully failing to do so are up to AU$2,500,000 for me as an individual and up to AU$50,000,000 for a body corporate. Per affected party)
Am using
A business subscription
And so
These instructions
Are not applicable
It also appears that #google is forcing #gemini on all #schools using Google Workspace classroom edition.
As far as I can tell, you don't have the option to raise a support ticket with the startup edition anymore.
It used to be there, but I cannot find it anywhere.
Is that not sufficient? (Not trying to argue, just that support may not have complete info)
In 2024, the app became permanently installed and pinned to the bar. Because they're petty like that.
The moment that no longer becomes the case is the moment I move to Linux.
I'd rather not be forced to outsource my cognition, further enrich a trillion dollar company or give up my data privacy.
Not something that you should have to tinker with, but if I must, I'd rather support Open Source. 💚
There is nothing you can do short of permanently rolling back your software version & staying unpatched 😱
Recommend grabbing LibreOffice (free), Proton Drive+VPN, cancel M365 and enjoy saving $$$
At this point, I’m sorely tempted to bust out the old WordPerfect CDs…
The sudden effect of different businesses and individuals that deal with confidential data, scrambling to adjust to this change is so damn messy.
I'm not hallucinating the increase in speed, though. It is very noticeable.
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/notifiable-data-breaches/when-to-report-a-data-breach
However, Microsoft has its battalion of lawyers, and it's unclear which would darken the skies more.
Draft in Evernote or Scrivener which have handy notebook/project formats. Things with text + tables + figures, draft in R Markdown. For final formatting, I « compile » (from Scrivener) or « knit » (from R markdown) into Word.
Luckily, there is an easy solution: https://fedoraproject.org/
They're forcing a deeply unpopular and problematic feature on all their customers because Reasons.
Lasr time I did, they only give instructions to "disable" it and acted like it's the same as outright uninstalling it. Even when confronted about it.
4. They were unable to determine if such ingested data would "bleed over" into files other than those it was sourced from. (2/?)
It’s likely sandboxed to the org tho, so the bleed would be infra-org (which I understand for a lawyer is still potentially like… bad).
Y'all, this seems. . . not great?
i am *so* not looking forward to being forced into having a friggin' ai lurking in my work computer.
where there are programs that have patient info.
where i can see those patient's cc numbers and ssns. 😬😬😬😬
In their rush to get it out, I really don't think the people making and deploying it are thinking of its downstream ramifications at all.
It's like how everyone is convinced AI can put accountants out of a job, even though I've never met an engineer who understands accounting. How can you solve for a need you know nothing about?
(I mean, honestly, there's probably some bullshit legalese in there saying "Even though we forced this crap on you, if it fucks over your business, too bad, so sad.")
Although if it's openAI, he may torpedo that- He hates Sam Altman.
And orgs have the option to turn off training / diagnostic data, but unsure if its the default. 1/2
But also, it is the responsibility of your company to ensure you have a solid data processing agreement (well-defined term) with your vendors.
"WILL WORD PROCESS FOR FOOD!" 😂
Not to mention every health insurance company canceling all of their health insurance
Embedding this in the OS is the biggest security violation in the history of ever
I have no words.
This is so dumb.
Increasingly, though, it's just spoken. With a 'what-can-you-do' shrug.
Client data from the law firm (before I moved us off Microsoft) was accessible using Copilot from a completely unrelated Microsoft account.
It should absolutely 100% be malpractice in IT to support Microsoft now.
the entire Deck of cards needs to fall and lose their jobs..
I used an entirely different tenant account on a different machine on a different network and extracted information about that same fake client, which should have been impossible.
Worked many times.
https://www.libreoffice.org
#foss #opensource
Unfortunately it has edge cases where it currently fails. Even common stuff like creating a key bind for a symbol!
I'm not convinced the current publicly available tweaks are truly permanent enough or thorough...
I'm not sure that answers the point in the thread about confidential information potentially bleeding between docs within the org, but related to different clients within that org.
I recently ditched Microsoft Office for LibreOffice overnight, it was seamless as LibreOffice opens MS docs fine (I've had no formatting problems so far, though I was switching from Office 2007, not 365).
If she's typing a document to Client A, and copilot uses information it finds from a SIMILAR YET DIFFERENT CLIENT on the same computer to draft an email..
It effectively means COPILOT breached attorney client privilege, but she and her firm can be sued...
The assumption is that they'll just do it as a fait accompli.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/remove-copilot/ce0cd059-19b4-4e2d-91a7-35c7a66be9a9
Yes we steal people’s data.
No, we don’t/won’t tell how we do it.
No, you may not opt out.
Plus the usual — ‘There is no problem … and we are working on it.’
Not great, Bob!
Proprietary info is an issue but the wholesale sucking up of confidential client information, not to mention theft of judicial emails, deliberations, and adjudications might be a bit of a problem.
I can see major issues with confidentiality of client data
I kept thinking "y'all should be very afraid of that"
What I don't get is Microsoft letting this ship without having a solution for clients bound by HIPPA and corp IP concerns.
1 it doesn't work yet
2 it hasn't been explained to tech support
3 tech support found bugs that have not yet been addressed
I can't imagine the way this is complies with DoD.
This did not happen in our Enterprise for Government account.
Microsoft would be out of compliance with the terms of the agreements. We have zero LLMs that are authorized on County systems.
Of course this is why most Government setups are behind others.
Those PS cmds will remove it from the OS but removing it from a business tenant or your Office install becomes more of a problem
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/remove-copilot-from-word/c46d62d3-7eda-4472-85f4-46f961642b36?correlationid=1f0294b6-e885-4561-9d09-646af909733d&from=ContactUsWebBCQR
Thanks for the timeline at least.
https://bsky.app/profile/matthewbest.bsky.social/post/3lggaugu3hc2s
(for a 'fun' non sequitur, changing the system font in windows broke something in the process of creating a bank payment file in a browser-based accounting program. But only in Chrome, which the program works best in)
I haven’t figured out how to disable it (or at least hide it) for webOutlook at work. Same thing with Adobe Reader’s “AI” constantly trying to ‘help’ when I just want to scroll down to the end.
Given the amount of infosec training we have to do on an annual basis and the “no camera-enabled devices” policy …I’m sort of surprised my own company hasn’t taken the can-opener to Co-pirate the way they did for Solitare.
Many more things can be disabled or removed from windows over here.
Don't know if changing it on an existing install works.
Is there an alternative that my father could adapt to rather easily? He's in the "I know this and don't want to learn anything new" state of mind.
He does use Windows. I'll take a look at LibreOffice.
I think I could get him used to the Mac Suite of office products, but that would mean purchasing a new computer and I'm not sure about that.
It's got to be mitigation for now, I think.
Jeebus Crispies.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/copilot-in-microsoft-365-apps-for-home-your-data-and-privacy-6f0d8d80-f4bb-4c9f-989e-64a4adfd62e5
And the attached quote is from the linked article:
Cortana has now fully metastasized.
You know some M$ folks.
Do you think you could get them to do something about not screwing lawfirms & workers over with their well in a month we might let you turn off what you never wanted & not violate your duty to your clients & the law?
This is extra stupid M$!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Really bad behavior by Microsoft.
...was it something I said? ...
“I don’t represent the company in this respect, but I understand your concerns and will consult the appropriate internal teams” would have been easy for him to say. Or say nothing at all. 🤷♂️
I’m guessing the answer is much simpler—they copied over the inx for Win machines and failed to update them as the Mac option doesn’t actually exist.
Enterprise admins can (and should) disable Copilot and the Copilot+ PC stuff via group policy.
Microsoft Support, at least the consumer level, is shit.
I’m not signed into a MS account tho, which might be why I didn’t see it in OneNote or other office apps.
I don’t use Windows for much, generally on Mac, but I keep one PC around.