Old habits die hard: Microsoft tries to limit our options, this time with AI

Microsoft recently announced it’s pulling back Copilot 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 was pushed onto users

Over the past year, Copilot wasn’t offered to Windows users — it was installed on them. The M365 Copilot app began auto-installing on any Windows device running Microsoft 365 desktop apps, with no prompt and no consent. A new physical keyboard key was added to laptops that launched Copilot by default, with no simple way to remap it. By default, Copilot was pinned to the taskbar starting with Windows 11 PCs. And, going a step further, Microsoft planned to embed it into three of the most fundamental surfaces for the operating system: the Windows notification center, the Settings app, and File Explorer. 

Then came the user backlash. 

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

This isn’t the first time – Microsoft has a pattern of deceptive design patterns

The pattern of behavior here isn’t new. Independent research commissioned by Mozilla has documented how Microsoft uses design and distribution tactics to override user choice — from deliberately complicated processes for changing your default browser, to UI that routes 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 force behaviors that help the bottom line, not people’s lives. Here are a few examples from the rollout of Windows 11 that have continued to strip users of their 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 has not implemented a true device migration system, like we see with Android, iOS, and MacOS, where your apps, settings and data are all reflected on your new device when you buy a new computer. Instead, the defaults are changed back to Microsoft’s own products. 
• Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams by default ignore your default browser selection and open links directly in Edge.
• Windows does not offer a simple prompt that other browsers can trigger asking to become your default browser. Instead, other browsers have to direct you to Windows settings and hope you finish the multi-step process.

The Copilot rollout followed the same playbook we’ve come to expect from Microsoft: use automatic installs, physical hardware, and default settings to force behaviors. In the most recent instance, they allowed their AI to learn and gather data as quickly as possible before people had a choice. 

What ‘genuinely useful’ AI integration actually looks like

We, like Microsoft and basically every tech company, have been asking ourselves the same question: What does it mean for AI to be genuinely useful? For us, the answer is simple. AI should 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 profit. 

We’ve rolled out AI-enhanced features that make browsing smarter, faster, and more personalized, such as 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 which suggests related tabs and group names.

But we also know users deserve a choice. We built our answer into Firefox 148, introducing a centralized AI Controls 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 should decide whether AI is part of your browsing experience at all. Not Big Tech. Not Mozilla. You.

And critically, your preferences also persist across browser updates, which means AI tools won’t silently re-enable themselves after a major upgrade. No reinstalling. No opting out again after the fact. It’s designed for people who care about what’s happening on their computer but shouldn’t have to become a systems administrator to stay in control of it.

The stakes are bigger than one rollback

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

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