If you want to scrub Windows 11's AI features off the face of the earth some legend has made a tool that does just that

In my mightily humble opinion, probably the worst thing to happen to Windows over the years has been AI. Maybe I'm just not the target market for it, but having Copilot buttons clog up my taskbar and apps wasn't what I thought I'd be getting with Windows 11. And I know at least some of you feel the same, because someone's gone out of their way to make a tool dedicated to removing all Windows 11's AI features.

The creator, zoicware on GitHub, says: "The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include increasingly more AI features and components. This script aims to remove ALL of these features to improve user experience, privacy and security."

Full disclosure: I am not a software or security expert, and in fact I have been known to be a massive idiot on occasion, so do not take any of this as direct advice to install and use said software. Research it and make that decision at your own risk.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's get nuking our PCs of all this AI garbage. Apparently, this tool disables a bunch of registry keys to do with all things AI, prevents AI packages from being reinstalled, removes tons of AI-related files, and much more. It looks like it essentially takes a shredder to anything AI related in Windows.

There's an obvious concern here, this being that Windows 11 is pretty AI-centric these days, so there's a risk that messing with all of this could affect other parts of the system. Who knows how Windows is coded on the back-end?

(Image credit: Microsoft)

But part of the utility is a custom Windows Update package that is aimed at stopping those AI features being patched back in with subsequent updates or patches down the line.

The specific registry keys it disables are:

Disable CopilotDisable RecallDisable Input Insights and typing data harvestingCopilot in EdgeImage Creator in PaintRemove AI Fabric ServiceDisable AI ActionsDisable AI in PaintDisable Voice AccessDisable AI Voice EffectsDisable AI in Settings Search

But there are AI components that can't be disabled via this script, such as Gaming Copilot or OneDrive AI, though the github repository does provide methods of disabling those in Windows settings.

There are other tools that can be used to debloat Windows in various ways, too—Windows Utility is a popular one—but I'm not sure whether these take as big of a sledgehammer to AI features as this new tool does.

I also wonder what using a tool like this will mean for Microsoft's push towards Windows becoming an "agentic OS" and potentially having these agentic AI agents rummage through our files. Hopefully that can be nuked off the face of the planet, too.

I shouldn't go too ham on Windows 11, though. It does look like it might have a nice new Run dialog box coming up in future updates. Silver linings, I suppose.

I do want to note again, that you ought to be careful just randomly downloading or entering scripts into Windows, especially if it's messing with the registry. This isn't Linux after all. But if you want to go through the script it's all up on github, so you can go looking through exactly what it's doing yourself just to be safe.