Seeking a simple way to disable Microsoft Copilot in Windows, Robert Irvine tries to…
Remove AI junk using AI
Hey, did you hear? Microsoft’s got a new AI assistant called Copilot, which will revolutionise how you use your PC and the web. Strange that it’s kept so quiet about it – hopefully we’ll learn more soon.
I’m being sarcastic, of course, because in the last year, Microsoft Copilot has become impossible to avoid. It’s now built into Edge, Microsoft 365 and the Windows 11 taskbar, and will soon be added to OneDrive, Notepad and File Explorer. Microsoft is even introducing a Copilot key on Windows keyboards (see Issue 675, page 49), so there’ll be no escape from the ruddy thing.
This is obviously great news if you like AI tools, but I can’t help feeling it’s too much too soon and Microsoft is effectively shoving Copilot down our throats. So I was interested to read about a new program called BloatynosyAI, which promises to remove Copilot and other bloatware from Windows 10 and 11. The clever part is that it fights AI with AI, by letting you ask it to disable unwanted features.
BloatynosyAI is a silly name, bringing to mind the old Mr Chad cartoons that draped their big hooters over walls to enquire ‘wot, no chips?’ and the like. The developer must have realised this, because by the time I went to download the program from www. snipca.com/49552, it had been given the more sensible name of CoTweaker.
I clicked the ‘CoTweaker.zip’ link on the Releases page (www.snipca. com/49553) to download the ZIP file to my Windows 11 PC, extracted its contents and double-clicked the ‘CoTweaker.exe’ file. Inevitably, Microsoft Defender SmartScreen sprang into action, but VirusTotal gave the file a clean bill of health (see the evidence at www.snipca.com/49554), so I clicked ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’.
CoTweaker opened in a side panel that looked very similar to Copilot’s – in fact there was a ‘Use Copilot’ option in the top-right corner for switching to Microsoft’s tool. It also displayed a greeting from a ‘friendly companion’ called Ava, which said its sibling was Microsoft Copilot “but we don’t always see eye
