Microsoft backs down on AI-first Windows 11 plan after user backlash forces major pivot

Microsoft is reportedly backing down on its AI-first plan after people made their voices heard

* Microsoft pushed an agentic Windows 11 with Copilot, but user backlash reportedly forced a rethink. * Copilot integrations in Notepad and Paint are potentially under review; some may be removed or rebranded. * Sources say Microsoft is pivoting from AI features back to fixing Windows 11 stability and core systems. Back in November, Microsoft got a reality check. Pavan Davuluri, the President of Windows and Devices, took to X to announce that they plan to make Windows 11 an agentic operating system. Microsoft is very pro-AI and sees a lot of potential with the tech, so there's a good chance Pavan expected people to respond in kind. Instead, they caught the ire of Windows users who were sick to death with Copilot. Usually, with stories like these, the big company decides that the thousands of people yelling at them on X are the ones in the wrong and goes ahead with its plan. However, it seems the feedback caused Microsoft to rethink things, as we've gotten reports that the company is taking its foot off the Copilot pedal. Windows 11 just hit 1 billion users 130 days faster than Windows 10 Are people embracing Windows 11, or are they being shoved onto it? Posts 12 By Simon Batt Microsoft has reportedly shifted focus away from its AI tools And likely onto fixing Windows 11 As claimed by Windows Central, Microsoft is reportedly going back over its Copilot integrations with a fresh eye. Citing "people familiar with Microsoft's plans," Windows Central claims that the massive negative feedback over its AI tools was the main trigger for this revision of the company's plans. The sources claim that Microsoft is currently documenting which AI integrations "make sense," and anything that fails the test will either be scaled back or removed entirely. The good news is, if the sources are true, two of the bigger eyebrow-raising Copilot integrations are potentially getting the axe: Details around how the company is going about this remain light, but sources say Copilot integrations like those found in Notepad and Paint are under review. This may result in Microsoft removing certain Copilot integrations from these apps, or at the very least removing the Copilot branding and pivoting to a more streamlined experience. Of course, given how we have no official statement on the matter, it's a good idea to take this claim with a hefty grain of salt. However, with other sources claiming that Microsoft has shifted gears to repairing Windows 11's stability issues, it makes a lot of sense. The company has been throwing Windows 11's core systems under the bus in exchange for AI recently, so there's a good chance that Microsoft is having post-Copilot regret over its actions.

Microsoft shifts focus to stabilizing Windows 11 after patch failures

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. The big picture: For years, Windows could survive almost anything as long as it kept working. That safety net is starting to disappear in Windows 11, just as Microsoft is wiring the operating system more tightly to AI services, cloud storage, and an increasingly fragile update pipeline. Emergency patches that break shutdown, security updates that strand some machines at boot, and a desktop recorder that quietly captures nearly everything on screen have turned reliability and trust into the platform's biggest technical constraints. Inside the company, engineering teams have been pulled into a "swarming" effort to stabilize Windows 11's core behavior - a shift that acknowledges how far the OS has drifted from the predictable foundation Microsoft wants to build its AI future on. The trigger for this shift is not a single catastrophic release, but a pattern of small, compounding failures. Over the past several months, Windows 11 has shipped updates that quietly introduced Remote Desktop instability, duplicated instances of core tools such as Task Manager, and even broke basic recovery environments on some machines. Bugs that once would have remained confined to Insider rings or preview channels have instead landed in production builds, forcing IT departments and enthusiasts to roll back patches or reach for recovery media. January's update cycle turned that pattern into a very public mess. After reports that some systems could no longer shut down cleanly, Microsoft rushed out an out-of-band fix for its first Windows 11 update of 2026 - only to follow it a week later with another emergency patch to stop apps such as OneDrive and Dropbox from freezing when opening or saving cloud-hosted files. In parallel, a separate flaw left a subset of Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 machines stuck on a black screen at startup with an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME stop code, requiring users to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment and manually remove the offending update. For administrators, that kind of failure is more than an annoyance. It means weekends spent testing hotfixes on lab hardware, adjusting patch-management policies, and fielding calls from users whose machines no longer behave predictably after what should have been routine security updates. When fixes themselves have to be fixed, confidence in the entire servicing model begins to fray - even among those who understand how difficult it is to maintain an operating system that must run across wildly different hardware stacks. The "swarming" strategy is Microsoft's attempt to break that cycle by shifting engineers away from new features and toward bug backlogs and performance regressions. Internally, it is framed as a short-term push, but comments from leadership suggest it will shape much of the year. Pavan Davuluri, the company's Windows and devices chief, has told users to expect a sustained focus on system performance, reliability, and what he calls "pain points" in the everyday experience of using Windows. All of this is unfolding as Microsoft tries to reposition Windows as an "agentic" operating system. Copilot Plus PCs, built around ARM-based silicon and dedicated NPUs, are meant to showcase what that model can deliver when AI workloads are accelerated locally rather than running entirely in the cloud. Recall is the most aggressive expression of that vision. The feature runs as a system-level service on Copilot Plus machines, capturing near-continuous, encrypted desktop screenshots and indexing them with on-device AI so users can later scroll back through time or search for things they vaguely remember seeing. Microsoft stresses that Recall's storage is local and optional, and that users have tools to pause recording, exclude specific apps or websites, and wipe sections of their activity timeline. Privacy researchers and regulators, however, have focused on those same mechanisms as a source of risk. Because Recall can see whatever appears on the screen, it can also capture passwords, financial dashboards, confidential work documents, or personal conversations unless users explicitly define exclusions. Beyond bugs and AI, Windows 11 has also picked up behaviors that make the operating system feel argumentative. Default browser choices can be overridden in practice by Start menu searches and system links that insist on opening in Edge, routing traffic through Bing even when users have already selected alternatives such as Chrome or Firefox. At various points, promotional dialogues for Edge and Bing have appeared in ways that resemble adware campaigns, with pop-ups that are easy to mis-click and difficult to dismiss permanently. None of these behaviors are technically novel - operating systems have nudged users toward ecosystem services for years - but they land differently when users are already grappling with reliability problems and complex update cycles. It becomes harder to distinguish genuine security or usability improvements from marketing-driven prompts, and easier to interpret every unexpected dialog as another attempt to extract value from the user rather than an effort to make Windows better. Publicly, Microsoft is framing the next phase of Windows 11 as the beginning of a longer repair effort, not a one-off clean-up pass. Davuluri has acknowledged that "trust is earned over time," pointing to performance, reliability, and day-to-day usability as areas where the operating system still needs to improve. If Microsoft can make updates boring again, align AI features with clear, high-value use cases, and step back from confrontational prompts around browsers, storage, and accounts, it has a chance to stabilize its relationship with Windows 11's most demanding users. If it cannot, the next wave of AI-driven features may end up being judged less on their technical merits than on whether people still feel comfortable letting Windows reach so deeply into their work and personal lives.

Microsoft is reportedly 'pulling back' on stuffing Windows 11 with AI -- and I couldn't be happier

Redmond is reportedly scaling back its AI implementation to fix Windows 11 Is Microsoft finally starting to see the light? It's no secret that the company's obsession with AI has gone over about as well as a lead balloon with the Windows faithful. For the past year, it has felt like every update was less about making our lives easier and more about cramming Copilot into every nook and cranny of Windows 11. The backlash has been so loud and so consistent that a specific, none-too-flattering nickname has been trending across social media: "MicroSlop." It's a harsh term, but it perfectly captures the exhaustion of a user base that feels like their OS is being filled with non-essential AI features at the expense of stability, privacy, and common sense. Whether it's unwanted buttons in the taskbar or AI-powered "assistance" in apps that don't need it, the sentiment is clear: people are tired of AI being shoved in their faces. Wall Street seems to agree, too. Microsoft's stock just took a massive 10% nosedive -- its biggest single-day drop since the 2020 crash. That's $400 billion in market value, and the equivalent of McDonald's, Burger King, Coca-Cola and Starbucks all going to zero overnight. Turns out investors aren't too happy with their returns on AI spending! Thankfully, the message seems to have reached the higher-ups in Redmond. According to a new report from Zack Bowden over at Windows Central, Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy for Windows 11. Citing sources familiar with the company's plans, Bowden details how Microsoft is looking to streamline -- or outright remove -- Copilot integrations across several "in-box" apps like Notepad and Paint starting in 2026. The report suggests that internal teams have realized that haphazardly slapping a Copilot icon on every UI surface isn't actually helping anyone. In fact, Microsoft has reportedly paused work on adding new Copilot buttons to other built-in apps, signaling a shift toward being more "tactful and deliberate" with where AI actually appears. The biggest admission of defeat may involve Windows Recall. According to Bowden's sources, Microsoft internally views the current implementation of Recall as a failure. While the company isn't scrapping the "photographic memory" concept entirely, they are reportedly looking to evolve it into something else -- possibly even dropping the tainted "Recall" branding in the process. While under-the-hood AI efforts like Semantic Search and new APIs for developers are still moving ahead, the heavy-handed, front-facing AI features that have annoyed so many of us are potentially on the chopping block. I've been a Windows user since the late 90s -- I've lived through the highs of Windows XP and 7, and the dark days of Vista and 8. But even as a long-term fan, I'm getting fed up with how bloated and sluggish the OS has become in recent years. Every time I open a simple text editor or try to find a file, I don't want a digital assistant trying to sell me on a "smarter" way to work. I honestly hope this reevaluation is the real deal. Lessening these forced AI integrations would go a long way in making Windows feel like a tool again, rather than an advertising platform for Microsoft's latest buzzword. If Redmond actually follows through on cleaning up the "slop" and focuses on making the core OS fast and reliable, it might finally regain the trust of users like me who just want a clean place to get work done.

The billion-user trust gap: Can Pavan Davuluri fix Windows 11's 'agentic' identity crisis?

Windows 11 leadership pivots to reliability as AI criticism mounts Microsoft recently reported a major milestone: Windows 11 has officially surpassed 1 billion monthly active users. According to the company's fiscal Q2 2026 earnings call, the OS reached this goal in just 1,576 days, significantly faster than Windows 10, which took 1,706 days. On paper, it is a triumph of adoption and scale. However, this statistical victory is clashing with a historic low in user sentiment. As Microsoft pushes toward an "Agentic" future - where the OS proactively anticipates user needs through integrated AI - the platform is facing a public revolt from the power users and developers who form its backbone. Also read: Windows 11 crosses 1 billion mark, as Xbox revenue falls Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's President of Windows and Devices, has taken a direct stance in acknowledging this growing "trust gap." In a recent interview with The Verge and subsequent follow-up statements, Davuluri admitted that corporate promises are no longer sufficient to appease a frustrated user base. "The feedback we're receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear," Davuluri stated. "We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people... We know words aren't enough, it's on us to continue improving and shipping." Davuluri confirmed that the Windows engineering team is now entering a high-intensity phase internally described as "swarming." This pivot involves redirecting massive resources away from new AI "spectacles" to focus exclusively on fixing deep-seated "pain points": system performance, reliability, and the inconsistent UI dialogs that have plagued Windows 11 since its 2021 launch. The controversy over Notepad serves as the primary symbol for this erosion of trust. A tool prized for forty years as a fast, offline, and "invisible" utility, Notepad was recently updated with AI-powered "Rewrite" and "Summarize" features. Also read: Microsoft scrambles to fix Windows 11 after security update causes unexpected failures To use these tools, users must sign in with a Microsoft account, and their text is processed via cloud-based Azure services. On forums like r/Windows11, the sentiment is that Microsoft has violated a "safe space" and could have just done this with WordPad instead of getting rid of it. As one highly upvoted comment noted, "If Ms wants to cram AI and extra features somewhere, revive WordPad and put everything there. Notepad should stay simple and lightweight, that's the whole point of it." Many analysts point out that the 1-billion-user milestone is driven more by necessity than desire. With the October 2025 end-of-support date for Windows 10 having passed, millions of users and enterprises moved to Windows 11 simply to maintain security updates. This "forced migration" has created a unique contradiction for 2026: Windows 11 is technically the fastest-growing version of Windows ever, up over 45% year-over-year. Users are increasingly vocal about "update anxiety." The January 2026 update cycle further damaged credibility when the KB5074109 patch triggered critical "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" errors, leaving systems in boot loops and requiring manual recovery. Davuluri's "swarming" effort is intended to prove that Microsoft can still build a tool that gets out of the user's way. The 2026 roadmap now prioritizes "fundamentals" over "agentic" features. Microsoft has reportedly even pulled back on some "Recall" functionality, making it strictly opt-in after significant privacy pushback. For the first time in the Windows 11 era, the goal isn't to add something new, it's to prove that the OS can be reliable again. Whether 1 billion users will stay for the AI or are simply waiting for a more stable alternative remains the defining question of Davuluri's tenure.