LibreOffice says ‘no AI’ is now a software feature

If you’re looking for a document editor that doesn’t use artificial intelligence, LibreOffice may be just the software for you.

The Document Foundation, the nonprofit software maker behind the open source document editor LibreOffice, said in a blog post this week that while it does not reject AI out of hand, it “will not add” AI to its software for the foreseeable future.

The blog post comes weeks after the release of the latest version of LibreOffice in late August, in which the nonprofit reiterated that the software “contains no generative AI features.” 

LibreOffice said at the time that this was a “deliberate design position” to ensure that users’ documents are not uploaded to a server for processing and that no part of the software requires a network connection to function. The nonprofit added that its software is used by tens of millions of people and organizations, and that users should retain control over their data.

“Any organisation handling confidential, legally privileged or personal data needs to know where that data goes, and the only assurance that survives an audit is that it does not leave the machine,” the organization said. 

LibreOffice says users can still choose to use AI tools by installing software extensions that connect the document editor to local AI models.