Microsoft is trying to limit our options, this time with AI

Microsoft recently announced it pulls Copilot back from several of its core Windows apps – Photos, Notepad, the Snipping Tool and Widgets. Rolling back these forced AI integrations is the right move, but this is just the most recent example of Microsoft going too far without user consent.

Copilot is printed on users

For the past year, Copilot has not been offered to Windows users – it has been installed on them. The M365 Copilot app start installing automatically on any Windows device running Microsoft 365 desktop apps, without any prompt and no permission. A new one physical keyboard key was added to laptops that launched Copilot by default, with no simple way to remap it. By default, Co-pilot is pinned down to the taskbar starting on Windows 11 computers. And to go a step further, Microsoft planned to include it in three of the most fundamental surfaces for the operating system: the Windows Notification Center, the Settings app and File Explorer.

Then came the user feedback.

When Microsoft says now it wants to be “intentional” about Copilot, they really admit that they have made repeated choices to serve their business over their customers.

This is not the first time – Microsoft has a pattern of misleading design patterns

The pattern of behavior here is not new. Independent research commissioned by Mozilla documented how Microsoft uses design and distribution tactics to override user choice — from deliberately complicated processes to change your default browser, to UI that sends users back to Microsoft’s Edge browser even after they’ve explicitly chosen something else.

Since Mozilla published that research, Microsoft has continued to escalate its use of dark patterns to enforce behavior that helps the bottom line, not people’s lives. Here are some examples from the launch of Windows 11 that still left users with a choice:

• The Windows Search bar, embedded in the taskbar on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, is hardcoded to only open Microsoft Edge, regardless of your default browser.
• Windows hasn’t implemented a true device migration system like we see with Android, iOS, and MacOS, where your apps, settings, and data are all mirrored on your new device when you buy a new computer. Instead, the default values ​​are changed back to Microsoft’s own products.
• By default, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams override your default browser selection and open links directly in Edge.
• Windows does not provide a simple request that can trigger other browsers to ask to become your default browser. Instead, other browsers have to point you to Windows settings and hope you complete the multi-step process.

The Copilot deployment followed the same playbook we’ve come to expect from Microsoft: use automated installations, physical hardware, and default settings to enforce behavior. In the most recent case, they allowed their AI to learn and gather data as quickly as possible before humans had a choice.

What ‘truly useful’ AI integration actually looks like

We, like Microsoft and basically every tech company, have asked ourselves the same question: What does it mean for AI to be truly useful? For us, the answer is simple. AI must work on your terms, not ours. Firefox’s goal is to create AI enhancements that are made for people, not just because they can increase profits.

We’ve rolled out AI-enhanced features that make browsing smarter, faster and more personalized, like translations that stay local on your device to help you browse the web in your preferred language, alt text in PDFs to add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages and tab grouping to suggest related tabs and group names.

But we also know users deserve a choice. We built our answer into Firefox 148 and a centralized AI control panel in your browser settings, including a single “Block AI Enhancements” switch that turns off every AI feature at once. Each option is also individually controllable.

The premise is simple: you have to decide if AI is part of your browsing experience at all. Not Big Tech. Not Mozilla. You.

And critically, your preferences also persist across browser updates, meaning AI tools won’t silently reactivate themselves after a major upgrade. No reinstallation. Not to opt out again later. It’s designed for people who care about what’s happening on their computer, but don’t need to become a system administrator to stay in control of it.

The stake is greater than one rollback

When a company with Microsoft’s reach continues to control users — and only backs off when the noise gets loud enough — it shapes what people expect from technology. It tells people that their only real recourse is to complain until the company hopefully relents. It also makes it difficult for alternatives to compete when a company uses its reach and control to drive people back to its own products.

We don’t think this is the internet we have to accept. People have been clear about what they want when it comes to this age of the internet. They want to feel that they are in control of their own devices and their own data. This is the internet we are trying to build.