Why has microsoft copilot installed itself on my windows 10 pc?

Chien, Microsoft has a very long history of this sort of behaviour. No one is imagining it, so spare us all from the gaslighting please.

When Edge became a thing, Microsoft did exactly as it had done decades ago with Internet Explorer. It dominated my access to the internet and it was one almighty battle to stop it. I think, eventually, Microsoft changed its implementation of Edge and now I can run my preferred browsers under all circumstances, rather than Microsoft dictating it for me. However, having been rapped heavily on the knuckles over its dominating behaviour when Internet Explorer was Microsoft's imposed browser of choice previously, regardless of its windows' users preferences/needs, Microsoft should have ended this behaviour right then. It didn't.

Making Edge a component rather than a separate browser speaks very loudly to Microsoft's true intentions, since it wasn't uninstallable and kept popping up everywhere regardless. Microsoft knew very well what it was doing.

I regularly spot new ways Microsoft tries to aggressively coerce people accepting things they wouldn't have chosen. Like, for a long time, before I knew how to turn it off, my profile wasn't set up to Microsoft's liking, but I was happy with it. It was exactly how I wanted it. So Microsoft kept asking me to complete the profile setup I'd already done many times before. It felt like Microsoft was questioning my choices and trying to wear me down into accepting its more intrusive setup. If Microsoft had given the option to stop this screen from appearing everytime I load my computer on the first time this screen loaded, that scenario wouldn't have reoccured. And that's the point, Microsoft doesn't like to give you choices about certain things, it really wants to push you in a certain direction.

AI Copilot is just another example. We know this precisely when it happens to us because we already know we didn't want it, therefore didn't choose it, and it didn't exist before Windows 11, but now it's suddenly on our Window's 10 machines out of nowhere.

If you don't care about any of that, then bully for you. Like others, I have resisted going to Windows 11. I had the option of upgrading but already knowing that Microsoft has negated the choices I would make (and can currently make in Windows 10) in preference for its own, I decline to do so.

People are justifiably angry with Microsoft over these behaviours. A much smaller company wouldn't dream of alienating its customer base. That's the issue here. It's sheer arrogance.

It keeps getting updated. We don't really get the choice, do we?!

That requires a certain level of expertise to do. Many lesser skilled users would not know how to do this, or even that there might be a choice.

Don't you think it would be better if Microsoft was just upfront about its intentions prior to installation, so users can make informed decisions BEFORE anything gets installed, rather than this backward approach Microsoft favours?

You wrote:

Don't you think it would be better if Microsoft was just upfront about its intentions prior to installation ...

Microsoft has been upfront about its intentions. Microsoft has been discussing its plans for Copilot, artificial intelligence in Windows, and Copilot+PCs publicly for more than a year, through its own blogs and spokespeople.

And Microsoft's intentions have been discussed in great detail both in the professional media (PCWorld, ZDNet, AnandTech, Tom's Guide, etc.) and the popular media (Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, etc.)

Moreover, literally millions of Windows Insiders have been watching - and testing - the development of Copilot and artificial intelligence in Windows for more than a year.

So nobody can say that Microsoft has not been upfront about its intentions. That's simply not true.

What's true is that some people don't like Microsoft's intentions ... for CoPilot and Paint3D and Microsoft Edge and OneDrive and Outlook and Xbox and ... a hundred different things. That's too bad, but with more than 1.5 billion Windows users all over the world, you can't please everyone. And what you or someone else believes is so obviously an issue is not so obvious to everyone.

You still don't seem to get it. THe issue is quite simply, why did they not ask before installing this powerful and intrusive feature?