LibreOffice says ‘no AI’ is now a software feature
TechCrunch Zack Whittaker
LibreOffice says it won’t ship AI in the default app. That’s a feature now, because it keeps your files on your machine.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Zack Whittaker — read the original for the full story.
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LibreOffice is drawing a line many software makers won’t: no AI in the box. The Document Foundation, which makes the open source office suite, said this week that it does not reject AI outright, but it will not add it to LibreOffice anytime soon.
The timing matters. Just weeks after the latest release in late August, the project repeated that LibreOffice contains no generative AI features. That wasn’t framed as a missing feature so much as a design choice. The goal is simple: documents should not be uploaded to a server for processing, and the software should work without any network connection at all.
This is also about control. The nonprofit says LibreOffice is used by tens of millions of people and organizations, including people handling confidential, legally privileged, or personal data. For them, the promise isn’t fancy automation. It’s knowing the data stays put. If that sounds old-fashioned, that’s because it is. But old-fashioned is sometimes what auditors like best.
Users who want AI are not locked out completely. LibreOffice says extensions can connect the editor to local AI models. What it will not do is bake AI into the default install unless it finds an integration that keeps data on-device and avoids dependence on a single provider. For now, the answer is no, and LibreOffice seems comfortable making that a selling point while the rest of the industry stuffs chatbots into everything that moves.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the rare software company treating restraint as a product feature instead of an apology. In a market that keeps calling bloat “innovation,” a plain no is almost refreshing. Open source doesn’t have to chase every shiny vendor demo to be useful; sometimes the grown-up move is to leave the machine on the machine.
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