How to disable Copilot for all applications - Mac

Good news MS Office users... I can confirm that there IS a solution to this, for MS (Office) 365 subscribers at least.

Firstly, I've just wasted two and a quarter hours of my life in a text conversation with Microsoft tech support, who did not have a clue how to actually disable Copilot. I repeatedly said that the recommended actions don't work before they finally stopped barraging me with all the usual useless, unwanted "I'm sure I can help you to solve this", "Let me see what I can do to help", "I hope you're having a great day" platitudes.

However, I eventually discovered this solution. Be aware that it wasn't free, but for me it was worth it:

I sign outed of MS Office apps.

Went into my MS 365 account, made sure auto renewal was turned off and cancelled my subscription.

I signed up for an MS 365 CLASSIC (or MS 365 Family CLASSIC) account. These Classic accounts do not have the Copilot and other AI functionality that MS is trying to force on us all.

The Classic subscription may not be offered on every account page (it wasn't on mine. I had to contact MS sales).

Once I had signed up to the Classic subscription and it was confirmed, I started up one of the MS Office apps and signed in.

Copilot was gone. For me, anyway.

A couple of caveats:

I'm using Office for Mac (today has highlighted one of the reasons why I infinitely prefer the Apple to Microsoft ecosystem), but I'm assuming it will work for Windows users.

I had to sacrifice three months of my pre-paid MS 365 account, so it wasn't a free solution.

In the end I had to get MS Accounts to cancel the previous account, who tried very hard to do as little work as possible by getting me to wait until it expired. I had to insist they cancel it immediately.

But Copilot is gone and, as someone who spends 12 hours or so a day with their face in Word and Excel, I'm happy.

PS One more thing... the Classic subscriptions cost less than the standard ones with all the unwanted AI rubbish.

How come all of the recommended options do not exist in my version of MS Word? I am running Version 16.93 (25011212). There is no Word> Preferences - Copilot in my version of Word.

It may depend on the type of License, but I've since determined that it doesn't disable Copilot anyway.

Nor is the instructions from the below response work. Are you sure we are to turn on the experience?:

Refer to the following steps:

(Copilot disabled): Turn off Connected Experiences

If you are using Office for Mac, open any Office application and select the application menu (for example, Word or Excel) > > Preferences > Privacy.

1. Go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > “Privacy Options. This displays a checkbox for “Turn on optional connected experiences”.
2. You will then see the Privacy Settings dialog box with a checkbox to “Enable optional connected experience”. Deselect “Enable optional connected experience”.
3. Restart the Microsoft 365 application

That solution was from a MSFT agent, many of whom don't seem to know the difference between a Mac & a PC. There is no Trust Center on a Mac — That's a Windows contrivance. It points to the correct Preferences pane [marked in red] but you then need to click the Manage Connected Experiences button. It's also been indicated, though, that disabling Connected Experiences doesn't kill the beast, either.

How come all of the recommended options do not exist in my version of MS Word? I am running Version 16.93 (25011212). There is no Word> Preferences - Copilot in my version of Word.

Nor is the instructions from the below response work. Are you sure we are to turn on the experience?:

Refer to the following steps:

(Copilot disabled): Turn off Connected Experiences

If you are using Office for Mac, open any Office application and select the application menu (for example, Word or Excel) > > Preferences > Privacy.

1. Go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > “Privacy Options. This displays a checkbox for “Turn on optional connected experiences”.
2. You will then see the Privacy Settings dialog box with a checkbox to “Enable optional connected experience”. Deselect “Enable optional connected experience”.
3. Restart the Microsoft 365 application

I fully agree that the obtrusive demonic implementation of A[nimated] I[diocy] needs to be slain but as yet there is no known way of doing so. It's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

Please use Help> Feedback in the program menu bar to submit your comments to the development group. Also, go to the Word category on the Feedback Portal & cast as many votes as you can for as many similar postings you can find.

Also, please note that you are not communicating with anyone from Microsoft here. This is a peer-to-peer support venue hosted but not monitored by Microsoft employees. Contributors in these Communities either are paid contractual agents or knowledgeable users who volunteer their time & experience to help others.

Take heart, though. The Copilot icon which appears adjacent to each new paragraph isn't a part of the document, so even if you could kill it on your Mac it still would appear on other systems if the users haven't done the same. That's another aspect of the insidious problem — in most cases there's no simple way for recipients to tell whether AI has been used.

Dear Cherry, I am a NYT Bestselling novelist, a book critic for People, and I do developmental editing for clients. For them to see a Copilot icon on every page and to think I am using AI (which I would never do, being a creative, thoughtful person), is damaging to my reputation and to my work. None of the tools have worked to remove it and every writer I know is really unhappy about this. How could you just drop this on all of us without asking us if we want or need it? (we don't.) How could you not be aware of the numerous lawsuits about AI pirating author's materials to train their AI? I don't want AI learning anything from my work--nor do my readers or my clients.

What do you intend to do about this? My social media is filled with angry people who just saw this in their Word program today.