Last month, some Windows 11 users reported that Microsoft had automatically installed Copilot on their computers without notice. Some suspected that the company was engaged in covert surveillance and data collection, but a document published on Microsoft’s support site yesterday stated that this was due to a technical error.

According to the company, the Edge update was released on March 28, 2024.”A new package (MSIX) called “Microsoft chat provider for Copilot on Windows” was installed incorrectly“, as a result, Copilot may appear in installed applications.

Microsoft guarantees that the automatically installed Copilot program does not run in the background, does not execute code or processes, and does not collect or transfer data. The incorrectly installed package was intended to prepare certain Windows 11 computers for future activation of Windows Copilot. The program will be removed in one of the future updates.

Many users who found Copilot among installed programs quickly expressed their dissatisfaction on forums and social networks, but later it turned out that it occupies 0 bytes and is most likely a “plug”. The program was freely removed by standard Windows tools, which did not stop people from once again raising the issue of installing programs without their knowledge.