There is a non-AI (supposedly) version of Office365 desktop applications that you can get by starting the process to cancel your Office365 subscription. It offers you a cheaper version of office without copilot. But apparently that doesn’t mean all AI removed. I stumbled upon this by chance today.
So I was minding my own business this morning and was looking for some setting in my radeon software. It happens to tell me how long I’ve been in a play session of various games if I am currently in one. It said I had been playing Alien Isolation for 16 hours. Since I don’t have that installed at the moment I dug deeper and got the directory and exe for what it was calling Alien Isolation.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX64\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\AI\ai.exe"
Well…that won’t do. So I set about finding out why it was there, confirming that it was indeed an AI and not just a naming happenstance. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence.
The dumb shit I have to do to keep MS from infecting my shit… (also inb4 “hurr durr git linux” I’m working on it…)
- I made a separate local guest user account
- gave it full control of the AI folder, subfolders, and files
- confirmed the guest account could login and access the folder location
- broke inheritance
- removed all other account/group permissions except my main admin
- set my main account to full deny and ensured it was applied to the folder and everything under it
- Confirmed with process explorer x64 the exe doesn’t start when I run an office app.
Just figured I would drop this in here in case anyone else is trying to make sure that the malware/spyware being masked as AI isn’t infecting your computers.
If you do this, do be sure to confirm your other account can login and navigate to the folder before you remove all other permissions. Once I did, I created a shortcut and placed that on the desktop if for some reason I ever need to alter that stupid AI folder again. I plan on using that account as a way to isolate AI processes like this in applications I require. Thankfully I’ve been able to move to non-AI alternatives in most cases. (goodbye decade of foxit pdf reader, hello Okular)
And I’ve got to wonder: If you’re not using it, what exactly is it doing with those GPU cycles?
I’d like to know too. This was with Outlook so my pessimism comes out and I can only assume it was reading and indexing my emails.
The subscription without Copilot only leaves off the extra charge for their Copilot subscription. It does not change their data harvesting tools being built into their applications.
Microsoft makes it very difficult with a constantly moving target to block the Copilot integrations from being installed and collecting your data. They are now pushing for people to use their personal subscriptions on business systems to bypass IT restrictions.
The moving goalposts are the worst. And them seeping the consumer versions into controlled IT environments should be a lawsuit generating event.
I can’t wait to completely separate from MS. I’ve got a lot of progress in the right direction. My two biggest hold ups are certain Excel functions I rely on either not being available or a bear to do in Calc. And OneDrive. I wish I had the money to just setup a self-hosted option for OneDrive. OneNote has also been a hold up but I think Notesnook will be a good enough alternative once I get the self hosted version functional.
Our perpetually licensed copies of Office Professional Plus 2016 still read and write modern files, and only have comforting old OG Microsoft bullshit and not any of the new AI stuff. It’s working out fine for me so far.
Nice, that’s definitely a reason to hold on to the older versions. I miss old tech bullshit. This AI garbage is too much of a headache.
