The Microsoft Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) app is now pinned to LG smart TVs on the home screen, alongside Netflix and YouTube. However, unlike those streaming apps, it cannot be removed.
The changes followed a recent webOS software update that added the app to LG’s smart TVs with no apparent way to remove it, leading to complaints on social media.
The issue was first raised by Reddit users on the r/mildlyinfuriating forum, which had 36,000 upvotes at the time of publishing and over 3,400 comments, many expressing annoyance.
My LG TV’s new software update installed Microsoft Copilot, which cannot be deleted.
byu/defjam16 inmildlyinfuriating
“I’m beginning to actively hate Copilot. Login to 365, email? No. Calendar? Nope. Have Copilot. When something is pushed this hard, it begins to grate,” one user said.
“It’s all due to the tech giant’s AI race. This will only get worse, unfortunately,” came a reply.
Another said, “Big money wants AI. Consumers do not. Guess who the government is gonna cater to? Hint: it's not the majority.”
Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built into the company’s products to help users write, summarize information, generate code, and answer questions, among other things.
LG confirmed plans for Copilot integration earlier this year as part of its “AI-driven personalization.”
“Access to Microsoft Copilot further streamlines the process, allowing users to efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues,” the company said at the time.
However, user frustration seems to focus on the fact that the app cannot be deleted, not on what it can do. And from the looks of it, it does not do anything that LG promised it would – it simply leads to a web-based Copilot interface, according to Tom’s Hardware.
Some TV owners also voiced concern that a new function called “Live Plus” was turned on by default after the update, which recognizes the content watched on the device and uses that data for advertising purposes.
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Samsung, another TV manufacturer, also installed the Copilot app in August this year. However, LG did not officially announce the app’s arrival.
Some observers compared the furore caused by LG forcing an app on users who don’t want it to a 2014 controversy, when Apple pre-installed a U2 album into everybody’s iTunes library.
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