{"id":532842,"date":"2026-06-13T05:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/532842\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T05:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:12:11","slug":"i-told-copilot-to-fk-off-the-other-day-fk-off-copilot-i-typed-without-asterisks-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/532842\/","title":{"rendered":"I told Copilot to f**k off the other day. \u2018F**k off, Copilot,\u2019 I typed, without asterisks \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I told Copilot to f**k off the other day. \u201cF**k off, Copilot,\u201d I typed, without asterisks. This was a mistake, and not just because I didn\u2019t heed the warning of Anne, played so hilariously by Philippa Dunne<\/a> in the BBC comedy Amandaland. Anne says her husband laughs at her for saying please and thank you to AI<\/a> assistants. \u201cBut at least when the computers take over they might have me down as one of the good humans, and they might spare me. From the first cull, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have now lost my opportunity to join the ranks of the good humans. In my defence, I was provoked. I opened up Microsoft<\/a> Word and was greeted with this instruction, which incidentally contained no please or thank you: \u201cDescribe what you\u2019d like to draft with Copilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

This incursion on my job, my domain, my function, my reason to get up in the morning, made me very angry. You might as well repossess my home now, Copilot, I thought. \u201cF**k the f**k off,\u201d I said out loud, Malcolm Tucker style. (I live alone.)<\/p>\n

Later, as I was reading some press material for a Netflix show, another message popped up. \u201cThis appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant,\u201d it instructed.<\/p>\n

I sighed and tried not to take it personally that some stupid software doesn\u2019t understand that long documents \u2013 laden with precise details, exact quotes and things other people might miss \u2013 are what I want and need. Bullet points, each one written in the same deadening rhythm of AI-speak, are not.<\/p>\n

Blathering tech giants are on a dual mission to generate reams of unreliable text, purportedly on our behalf, and reduce everything else to a bland summary. Don\u2019t read this, don\u2019t write that. We\u2019re doing that for you now. No need to worry your pretty little heads about \u201cthinking\u201d or \u201cchoosing\u201d. And if you do find the strength to rustle up your own email from the available words in your pathetic human vocabulary, here\u2019s another pop-up to make you doubt your capacity to communicate: \u201cRewrite this paragraph with Copilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is perhaps becoming less obvious by the day, but journalists are not meant to use AI to either \u201cdraft\u201d or \u201crewrite\u201d anything. To do so contravenes the ethics inherent in the role and drains the joy from it too.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t vote for Christmas, turkeys,\u201d the guidance goes. Okay, I won\u2019t. And yet I increasingly fear the media is not immune to the phenomenon in which people sceptical about the claims made by AI vendors, and alarmed by their intentions, find they must keep that a secret and instead pretend to be \u201cone of the good humans\u201d to placate AI-enthusiast bosses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee, that is a big part of why I hate it. This forced inevitability,\u201d Ava (Hannah Einbinder<\/a>) tells the smarmy pusher of an AI tool called QuikScribbl in a final-season episode of Hacks written by Carolyn Lipka and Joe Mande.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Patrick Freyne: Here\u2019s why AI is making us dumber and more lonelyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like you are always saying that it\u2019s happening whether you like it or not. But you\u2019re the ones making it happen, okay, and you could easily stop it if people could say that they didn\u2019t want it, but you don\u2019t want to give people a choice. So you just say the train is already on the tracks, and you don\u2019t let people decide for themselves. I\u2019m sorry, it is technological R-A-P-E.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, the software guy is adamant that Deborah (Jean Smart<\/a>) will use QuikScribbl to write her comedy routines. \u201cBut I want to write the jokes. I like doing the work,\u201d she protests, explaining that she arrived at a particular punchline after \u201ctrying a million other versions of it\u201d first. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time that joke didn\u2019t work, not only did I make it better, but it made me a comedian. Because to become one you have to do it and fail, and do it and fail over and over and over, until you figure out who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

These two speeches burn with writers\u2019 rage, but the flippant yet sinister name of the fictional software is genius alone. You\u2019re not using your slow human brain for this, are you? Why not write faster with QuikScribbl?<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t choose to install Copilot on my computer. I tried to uninstall it, but it still seems to be hovering there, taunting me. The solution might be to stop using Word like some kind of Gen Xer. Journalists joke online that only psychopaths write directly into the clunky content-management systems designed for newsrooms, but maybe that\u2019s the simplest way of escaping QuikScribbl \u2013 sorry, Copilot.<\/p>\n

Because, of course, the true error I made when I told it to f**k off was that I addressed it as if it\u2019s a real being that can be wounded through engagement, not the advance tentacle of a pernicious industry we can hurt only by ignoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I told Copilot to f**k off the other day. \u201cF**k off, Copilot,\u201d I typed, without asterisks. This was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[289,3412,18,7947,19,17,181663,4436,305,229262,82],"class_list":["post-532842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bbc","tag-eire","tag-hannah-einbinder","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jean-smart","tag-laura-slattery","tag-microsoft","tag-philippa-dunne","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116741088722775935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}