Daily Journal 12/8/25

If you are attending Scares That Care’s AuthorCon VI charity event as a professional, and you would like to be involved in Programming, please fill out this brief questionnaire. Deadline is December 16.

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Sitting here in my office this morning with a good cup of strong black coffee, and a brand-new episode of The Howard Stern Show, and a full and free workday ahead of me. Goals for today are FALLING ANGELS: THE LABYRINTH Book 4, get contracts done for the final two guest announcements of AuthorCon VI, and record new episodes of SECRET HISTORIES and KEENEVERSATIONS.

In short, I am happy and satisfied, and all is right with the world.

Except for the fact that Microsoft has bundled their Copilot AI into all of their products, and there’s no way to turn it off.

I don’t use Windows OS exclusively. A few years back, when I launched my Manhattan on Mars book imprint, I purchased a Mac desktop because Robert Swartwood insisted that I use a program called Vellum (and I am so glad he did, because Vellum is absolutely amazing, and makes desktop publishing so much easier). Vellum is only available on Apple/Mac (or it least it was at the time). So no, I don’t use Windows exclusively. But I have used Windows since 1997, particularly Hotmail (I’m so old I still have a ‘Live’ account) and Microsoft Word. And they have bundled Copilot into both of those things. So far, users aren’t required to use it, but it is always there, prominently displayed — nay… annoyingly displayed — and there is no way to remove and delete it from the suite of products. Worse, even if you don’t use it, the stupid little Copilot pop-ups hamper and slow down what you’re doing, particularly in email, and on Microsoft Forms, which is what inspired this rant, because my first order of business this morning was to create the questionnaire I linked to above, and that should have taken 3 minutes, but Copilot kept popping up his stupid little head and demanding he be allowed to help, and I had to keep telling him to fuck off.

These companies are bundling the AI into their products because people are not using AI the way they anticipated, and thus, they’re not making money off it. For now, in most cases, it’s optional. But I suspect the day is coming fast where you’ll have no choice but to use it, and that’s the point where I’ll drop a host of products that I’ve used for years.