Dear Microsoft,

Dear Microsoft,

Why do you not trust that I know what to say? That I can write what is on my mind? That I even know what to think?

How is it that you can spend thirty, forty years with the world’s school systems treating your software as just as crucial a lifeskill as reading, and act as if the barrier to entry for writing a fucking Word document is still too high?

The written word is the crux of human civilization. From heiroglyphs and cave paintings, tablet carvings and bamboo inkings, to the printing press to the typewriter and eventually the word processor – the human capacity to communicate in written form and spread that to those around them is a requirement for us to grow, adapt, understand, revolt, connect, and survive.

And you’re trying to take that away from us.

Writing is my purest form of self-expression. I might not always write with the best form, with perfect structure, or with any sense at all – but the direct feed of my ideas and musings to paper or document is the only way I can make sense of the world.

Sometimes I need to journal my thoughts to process through grief or trauma (or just a tough situation). Sometimes I need to connect with a friend or potential colleague. Sometimes I need to teach a difficult, technical subject. Sometimes I need to swoon over my favorite video game. Sometimes, I just need to vent or shout. No matter what my goal is in the moment, being able to write is critical for all of it.

The majority of us – at least those of us in more developed nations – are taught to read and write as early as possible. It’s a skill that you never quite lose, but to utilize it effectively it is a skill you need to practice. Writing is like a muscle and the more you neglect it, the more you risks atrophy.

That’s why I cannot understand how it benefits anyone to try to take that agency away. How is it that I can open Word – a program with the sole, singular purpose of allowing me to write – insists on hovering an icon on every line, with every action I do, begging me to let your snake oil “AI” take the riegns and write for me.

I opened Word to write, not to have someone else write for me.

Copilot cannot think. It’s not human, it’s not sentient, it’s technically not even AI. All it can do is regurgitate new combinations of words that it’s stolen from everyone else who wrote before it and spit them out, taking control, agency, and critical thought away from the user.

Copilot doesn’t know what I’m thinking. It doesn’t know what I’m feeling. It can’t write what I want, it can’t write how I write. And even if it could, what good would that serve?

If I give up on writing, on communicating with my fellow human, I’m giving up on humanity.

If I don’t work to organize my thoughts and feelings, I’m giving up on processing them. On understanding them.

If I don’t practice my prose, develop my style, apply my own worldview and filter what I say through my own lens, I’m giving up on anyone knowing that it’s me they’re talking to at all.

If I can’t be bothered to write this, how can I expect anyone to be bothered to read it?

I’m not a machine. I don’t exist to “create content.” I’m a human. I have thoughts to process, ideas to share, critiques to express, conversations to have. Turning my ability to write and share into an automated affair doesn’t benefit me, the paying user. It doesn’t benefit society which has raised your software up over the past few decades. It doesn’t benefit humanity.

Instead it ensures that the only writing and reading left being done would be by AI chatbots and agents, silhouetted on the wall while the real humans are stuck back in the cave.

Microsoft Word became the default word processing software due to its wide availability and convenience. But at this point, anyone can make a word processing program. There’s no end of viable competitors (LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, WPS Office, AbiWord, IA Writer, Scrivener, to name a few) – and by showing that you’re no longer interested in serving the functionality your users purchase your software for (you know, writing), you’ve dug your own grave.

The existential dread I feel by seeing that Copilot cursor follow my words around like a sick puppy, staring me in the eyes, begging to be clicked on, eats me alive. Demanding to be used, to let it write for me so I can spend my time doing better things like rotting my brain by searching the web and not clicking on any results because there, too, Copilot can do the basic menial tasks for me and keep stealing other people’s work along the way.

I put so much work, my soul into the things I write. Yet I cannot escape this Copilot pest, this tick buried into the skin of every document infecting me with a disease, trying to take my writing away.

I will not open Microsoft Word again. I’ve cancelled my subscription, and you will not see another dollar for me. You’ve lost me on Windows, and now you’ve lost me on Office.

You have ruined Microsoft Office. You have ruined Windows. You have ruined Bing. You have ruined your entire human-facing business. And there’s no going back. You simply cannot be trusted to develop software that benefits human beings anymore.

It’s unclear when your customers stopped being your users, but you clearly no longer have an interest in being useful to human beings anymore. Make some Copilot-generated people to be your customers instead, and leave the rest of us alone.