LibreOffice says having no AI is now a feature

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The Document Foundation, the nonprofit behind the open source office suite LibreOffice, says it will not add AI to its software for the foreseeable future, TechCrunch reports. It stresses that it does not reject AI outright. The August release of LibreOffice 26.8 already stated that it "contains no generative AI features." The foundation calls this a "deliberate design position"

The aim is to keep users' documents from being uploaded to remote servers and to avoid requiring a network connection. The foundation argues: "Any organisation handling confidential, legally privileged or personal data needs to know where that data goes." LibreOffice is used by tens of millions of people and organisations, including governments and public bodies that care a lot about data sovereignty

Users can still add AI through extensions that connect LibreOffice to local AI models. However, the foundation says no current integration meets its requirements, which include keeping data on the user's device and not relying on a single AI provider. It describes this as a judgement about today's technology, not a "judgement on the value of the sector", and says it will keep watching how things develop

It is a striking contrast with Microsoft, which this week announced even deeper AI integration in Windows, and with Google and Anthropic racing to put assistants into office documents. For some users, especially in law, healthcare and government, an office suite that guarantees no data leaves the machine is a real selling point. It also echoes Ubuntu's choice to make its AI speech tool optional

Is no AI a selling point for you? And should office software keep AI optional, or will that leave it behind?

LibreOffice says 'no AI' is now a software feature | TechCrunchtechcrunch.com