How to stop Annoying Copilot popup on initial app opening

For the past few days we are getting this automatic popup when we open any Office app. It happens EVERY TIME we open the app, and we can't find a way to turn it off. If we want to work with Copilot, we know where to find the icon. We don't need this harassing us EVERY TIME we open an app. Any suggestions on how to make this stop would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I have searched for option to turn off Copilot and keep seeing references to the Copilot being listed in the sidebar of the Options, but it is not on ours. Not sure if the answer is in this area, but we can't access that either.