Next month, Microsoft will begin adding its AI-powered Copilot app to all 365 Desktop App users, regardless of whether they want to use it. The rollout is expected to be completed by mid-November and will exclude systems in the European Economic Area (EEA). Copilot will be added and enabled in the start menu. The following is from Microsoft (via Bleeping Computer):
“This app provides a centralized entry point for accessing Copilot experiences and AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365. This change simplifies access to Copilot and ensures users can easily discover and engage with productivity-enhancing features.”
-Microsoft
It isn’t all bad news, as business-managed devices still have the means to uninstall or disable Copilot if they choose to. Microsoft included guidance to IT Admins to alert users of the upcoming change to avoid confusion. Still, as it turns out, its deployment can be prevented via the policies and device management. Unfortunately, personal devices lack a clear path for doing the same, but it’s probable someone will discover it if Microsoft chooses not to disclose the technique. Here are the steps for Admins to disable Copilot.
- Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center with an admin account.
- Go to Customization > Device Configuration > Modern App Settings.
- Select the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, then clear the Enable automatic installation of Microsoft 365 Copilot app check box.
Microsoft is going all out in integrating Copilot across all parts of Windows. It was previously announced that it would add features to the Edge browser sidebar, and before that, a new option was added allowing Admins to pin it to the taskbar. On the 365 subscription side of things, Copilot services were bundled in, which (per Tom’s Hardware) included a 43% price increase as well. It’s obvious that Microsoft wants to see returns sooner rather than later for the billions it has already invested in AI and is working on ways to get its users to help foot the bill, and all this, as reports indicate that AI adoption in 2025 has not gone as planned.
AI adoption actually falling now for many firms pic.twitter.com/BmTFHEqHPp
— Arpit Gupta (@arpitrage) September 7, 2025
Discussion (10 replies)
Join Discussion →I've been using copilot on my personal system. It's not bad. Just be careful about putting anything in there you don't want becoming common knowledge.
October? It's already installed without my consent. And I'm in the EU. Or did they mean the rollout excludes the EEA because it's already done here?
Totally shocked, honestly. I thought it meant the EU privacy laws prevented it but maybe there's some kind of bizarre loophole.
I've yet to try it but I usually tell folks that, for now, it's just Bing on steroids.
I dunno man... I've done some image modification with it... took a picture of a guys truck, added an image of some wheels he was looking at and had it put the wheels on the truck in the image and it did a damn good job.
You can do some effective stuff with it. To call it bing on steroids is short shifting it.
Good to know and I really like hearing the positives of what can be done. Gives me a little more hope. :)
It just appeared one day in 365 both offline and online. Recently too, meaning sometime in the past 1-2 weeks. TBH I haven't run it once before uninstalling it. The app version at least, you can't uninstall it from the browser version.
There might be a loophole that allows them to install it for corporate users, since I'm using a company 365 subscription.
I don't need an AI on my computer that may or may not spy on me or use my data for training, when I can easily access a ton of AI tools that are fully offline and run locally.
Work just put out this big policy saying no AI without having each query, file, and/or prompt evaluated by our It department for potential security breaches and NDA compliance
I didn’t have to heart to ask if we could still use Google Search. Copilot is enabled in all our MS app suite programs they put on all the computers
One of my co-workers had an interesting thing happen with that yesterday which I thought was an odd coincidence. Basically said something like "press tab to use Google AI" in the search bar. They asked if it there was anything they did to cause but my guess is that a browser update pushed. I checked it out and you could type over for regular searching but still, kind of odd. We don't typically use chrome for much of anything anymore but I haven't banned it either but I was surprised to see that.
Folks with AI as a tool need to get them set up to properly use private data stores for their work with AI. Using public AI without privacy controls is asking for your data to be stolen or really just given away.