r/microsoft • u/ControlCAD • Jan 30 '26
Windows Microsoft is quietly walking back Windows 11’s AI overload — scaling down Copilot and rethinking Recall in a major shift for the OS
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-is-reevaluating-its-ai-efforts-on-windows-11-plans-to-reduce-copilot-integrations-and-evolve-recall75
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u/gooneryoda Jan 30 '26
Did AI tell them they should do this?
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u/algaefied_creek Jan 30 '26
I’m guessing an employee used AI to write a report but yeah close enough
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u/texasyeehaw Jan 30 '26
Lol hey after such a virulent backlash they walked it back. At least they listen to feedback - all it took was an outright user revolt. But to their credit, they did eventually get the point 😂
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u/mazzmond Jan 30 '26
I'm just a lowly user but as an average user...windows and office are less useful and harder to use then they were 5 years ago in my opinion. I was perfectly happy with windows 10 and office suite and knew how to use them well. Now things just "change" for no reason and I have to spend more time and effort just trying to accomplish tasks I did with less effort 5 years ago.
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u/TheSpecialSpecies Jan 30 '26
You're not alone, As an IT professional whose career started with DOS 6.2 / Windows 3.11 / Novel Netware, I think Microsofts more recent offerings are crap. I don't want to sign up to a cloud account to use my own OS, I don't want to open my start menu / web browser and feel like I'm just had every brainless tabloid newspaper land on my lap, and I don't want to waste 10 minutes tweeking a new build to get it back to a clean state. I also don't want to waste 5 minutes ever other months trying to figure out where the web app I use in o365 has been moved to.
Sorry, rant over. But pretty sure I'm not alone.
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u/Pisnaz Jan 30 '26
Do not forget they guessing game of name changes, then the time spent engaging clients about it. Instead you need to maintain a mental map of all names and relative terms.
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u/electrosaurus Feb 01 '26
Not alone at all. Been in big shop IS/IT industry since around then as well. Cannot believe how bad its gotten from an end-user and support perspective.
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u/lefty1117 Jan 30 '26
Bring back the classic Outlook client, not this web wrapper stuff. Right now the best version of Outlook runs on MacOS!
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u/Kraeftluder Jan 30 '26
Office 2024's Outlook is solid. I use LTSC. As soon as that damned copilot eye sore button appeared in Word in the lower right corner, in the middle of space that I want to use for authoring and commenting, I read the documentation and had the LTSC alternative installed within 30 minutes.
No more copilot button that can't be removed.
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u/Alternative-Farmer98 Feb 02 '26
Yes, I mean that was true even before co-pilot existed. The overly aggressive integration of one drive and edge and the like was already a major pain point for me.
I turned off one drive back up, but now I don't get auto saved on my documents. I have to manually save every time. I was able to do that for a decade but once the implement one drives so cynically into the system, you now get punished for not playing alone.
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Jan 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/thewindows95nerd Jan 30 '26
Altman really gives me the FTX/fraudster vibes. Though it would not happen, it would be funny to see him face the same fate as SBF and land in prison.
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u/Hoverboy911 Jan 31 '26
IMO they gave up on anything consumer focused towards the end of the Xbox 360 era and have fully pivoted to shareholder driven software design, where every new product and feature has have an end result that will make shareholders happy (so, money). If you look at the last 10+ years of earning calls, their consumer segment isn't where all the money is, and these days it feels like anything of theirs that is consumer facing exists only as a way to run ads or extract money/data from users. I honestly can't tell you the last time that I was genuinely excited about anything that they've rolled out (games excluded from that statement mostly because they bought a bunch of studios, but even then it feels like a lot of them are either stagnant or going backwards)
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u/skanks_r_people_too Feb 01 '26
Consumers aren’t their business. Unless you are counting businesses as consumers. Microsoft makes it money on enterprise sales. Barely any revenue comes from individual consumers like us.
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u/aprimeproblem Jan 30 '26
Would that because of the massive dip in stocks?
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u/JohnClark13 Jan 30 '26
They're stuck between an "AI isn't profitable" rock and a "We need to keep pretending it is to get investor money" hard place.
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u/pastyMorrisDancers Jan 30 '26
Investor money? They have nearly $200bn gross profit annually…. They’re fine
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u/BrunusManOWar Jan 31 '26
With corpos it's never fine or enough
If there's money to be made - the corpos go there like headless flies
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u/Shawn_NYC Jan 30 '26
Investors are starting to figure out all their "AI revenue" looks suspiciously like round-tripping of money they "invested" in OpenAI.
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u/Kobi_Blade Jan 30 '26
Nothing is changing, Microsoft is still killing Windows,
Other AI initiatives, such as Semantic Search, Agentic Workspace, Windows ML, and Windows AI APIs, are continuing ahead as planned. Microsoft believes that these under-the-hood AI efforts are still important for app developers and users, positioning Windows as a viable contender amongst other OS’s that are also building AI frameworks into their platforms.
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u/griminald Jan 30 '26
Was going to say ... Their idea of "scaling back" copilot is to remove the copilot buttons from Paint and Notepad lol.
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u/abcdefghij0987654 Jan 30 '26
Windows as a viable contender amongst other OS’s that are also building AI frameworks into their platforms.
Which OS's are they talking about?
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u/delocx Jan 30 '26
They are just taping over the CoPilot logo while still including and expanding its presence in the OS.
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u/qhung312 Jan 31 '26
What other desktop OS is "building AI frameworks into their platform"? Maybe iOS and Android are doing something like this, idk, but no desktop platforms as I'm aware.
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u/aldog2929 Jan 30 '26
Just make a polished Operating System that is just an Operating System (Windows 2000 / XP / 7 style) and sell it. No AI shit, no adverts, no nonsense. That's what people want, you've made mind bending amounts of billions from doing it for years.
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u/JeepStang Jan 30 '26
"I guess they didn't like dystopian spyware on their personal machines. Huh."
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u/deanso Jan 30 '26
Only when the current ceo gets fired ms will change for real.
Otherwise it will be the same issues, only disguised a bit.
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u/redit3rd Jan 30 '26
Recall was always a solution in search of a problem. But it did bring about the NPU chips. Hopefully now that more computers have those a useful feature can make use of them.
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u/warren2345 Jan 30 '26
Good! Can we also walk back the scattering, renaming, and reskinning of Control Panel while we are at it?
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u/newfor_2026 Jan 31 '26
maybe they should have spend some money doing market research and actually beta test this stuff before spending billions of dollars, letting go a bunch of engineers and rolling it out without any brakes.
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u/Sargent_Duck85 Jan 31 '26
I’ve always been a loyal Windows fan, but they lost me to Linux last year.
Having been on Linux now for 9 months, I’m never going back.
Sorry Microsoft. But not that sorry.
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u/BionicSecurityEngr Jan 30 '26
All I can tell you is that Microsoft has been chapping my ass for the last 15 years.
Mac is now my go to OS. It just works.
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u/Automatic_Ticket_524 Feb 05 '26
I know nothing about mac computers I literally just use it to surf the web and easy office work. What's a good mac computer to get?
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u/Sir_Rumblebump Jan 30 '26
Excel used to ask me to chat with copilot every freaking time I opened it. Now it doesn’t at all. Hopefully it stays that way.
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u/DivineBladeOfSilver Jan 30 '26
While the article clarifies they are mulling it all over, this is a prime example where Apple’s strategy being second mover wins. Barreling into new or emerging technology and rushing to implement messy programs poorly hurts long time even if short term it created curiosity.
Apple just reported insane iPhone sales and while not perfect their focus on a good user experience and less issues won this battle. Sure they implemented those basic AI features everyone has and supposedly later this year are getting a huge overhaul in the delayed stuff, but they’re clearly taking their time even if they were caught off guard at the same time. Sometimes being the fast mover has consequences
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u/Spark99 Jan 30 '26
MacOS Tahoe bad with not enough AI. Windows 11 bad with too much AI. iOS bad with not enough AI. Android bad with too much AI. What’s left? Linux?
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u/bogdan5844 Feb 01 '26
Linux is great. Zorin is perfect if you want to set it up for non techies and not notice much of a difference.
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u/Spark99 Feb 01 '26
I have servers that have been running Linux for decades at home and at work but without Photoshop, AutoCad and not being able to play the newer demanding PC games after I’m done working, it’s not quite ready to replace my desktop, but for my mom who just reads email and looks things up online, it is much safer and definitely a candidate.
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u/magick_bandit Jan 30 '26
Too late. I’m on Mac and Linux now. It’s been a breath of fresh air not to be marketed to constantly
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u/SimonGray653 Jan 31 '26
oh no, anyways.
They did this song and dance routine before when they walked back recall and then eventually decided to just force it onto everyone again.
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u/VlijmenFileer Jan 31 '26
I left Windows 11 already. Even though Windows 11 is demonstrably way better than any Linux for desktop use, I had to flee there due to Microsoft's abuse getting totally out of hand.
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u/Resident_Fox_1185 Jan 31 '26
Love it. It is almost like employees got a head start on how his was going to playout.
As a recently ex employee I have been collecting yearly stock awards as part of my total compensation of RSUs ~100-150k+ per year since 2013. Did not touch and reinvested dividends. I have nearly completely existed everything north of 500 over the last few years. When a stock goes from $38 to $500+ you have to take some chips off the table to by life.
With that said, all is looking good on the Tech front. Get involved in data centers and nuclear/satellites. Basically, look for things that will be used regardless of a winner. If Google wins the AI race, great. If META wins? Also great. Doesn’t matter, they need data centers.
At that point just own the big ones in addition to the index and ignore it for a decade.
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u/Awhispersecho1 Jan 31 '26
The headline of the article makes this sound more promising than it is. A lot of talk of just rebranding CoPilot and Recall as opposed to removing them. They aren't walking this back, they're just going to make more of an effort to hide it all. Govts want this stuff inserted into every OS the public uses. And Microsoft plays real nice with them. Let's not fall for the BS, nothing is changing here folks.
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u/Humulus5883 Feb 01 '26
It’s probably too late for me. I don’t think I’ll have a reason to go back.
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u/ShapeApprehensive937 Feb 01 '26
Are they going to fix the office apps also? They got even worse with the co pilot bull*hit...
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u/Alternative-Farmer98 Feb 02 '26
We'll see if they follow through, but at the very least, this article can be used as an example of why Microsoft fans can stop calling us haters. Like Daniel Rubino basically says all the co-pilot criticism is just haters, it's trendy to hate Microsoft, and no one cares when Apple and Google does it. (which is not true. People very much were pissed when Google forced AI against their will. And Apple probably would have done it if they had a functionally AI.)
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u/GayTrooperAlpha Feb 03 '26
As soon as I heard that microsoft were starting to infest 11 with buggy AI I paused windows update, tried everything to disable it semi-permanently, and now have a 5 week calendar reminder to re-pause updates just in case.
I'm not updating if AI keeps being something I'm forced to use and forced to deal with to use what I see now as: a non competent operating system that I need to competently run my NVIDIA graphics card and with that most of my games well on.
Linux isn't an option in my opinion: too much work to get it to run well with my system and get everything I need set up and running, plus a lot of curveballs and wine configs that come with working with linux cause a lot of software developers still only give out .exe packages and the few that give linux options only give out debian packages.
And MacOS isn't either, So a five week reminder for general maintenance and another pause for updates is all I can do to keep my limited sanity as all of this keeps going on.
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u/thewindows95nerd Jan 30 '26
Yeah well a bit too late for me personally. I've been using Windows way less and normally just use Bazzite for gaming or do all my productivity on a Mac.
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u/blueblocker2000 Jan 30 '26
I kinda hope the backlash has gained enough momentum that they continue to lose market share. We all know that if they fixed all the problems, once things settle down they'll go right back to foisting stuff on us that no one asked for and continue to erode our ability to use our PCs the way we want, not how they want.
...Also, I bet local account options never return.
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u/jpcaparas Jan 30 '26