LibreOffice turns the absence of AI into a feature and privacy advantage over Microsoft 365

AI on Windows. AI on Android. AI in Chrome. AI in Office. AI even in household appliances (with much more marketing than reality, it must be said). Despite this exhausting paradigm, there is software that for now will remain completely free of generative models. That software is called LibreOffice.

After the publication of version 26.8, which you can download for free from its website, The Document Foundation has made it clear what its official position is regarding the doubts of some users. And that position is none other than turning the absence of AI into a software feature. In other words, what the foundation means is that we are not facing a delay in its technical development schedule, but rather a deliberate decision to stay out of it.

Six non-negotiable conditions for LibreOffice

In it post published by the foundation, it reminds that its package Serves tens of millions of jobs. Many of them are found in public administrations, hospitals, educational centers and legal offices. That is not a minor issue.

And in these environments, the documents contain highly confidential information. Therefore, the entity makes any integration subject to compliance with six strict requirements. The three most relevant are the user’s total control over the place of inference, the absolute prohibition of sending data to the network without prior authorization and maintaining the zero telemetry policy.

Likewise, the project developers demand interoperability with multiple providers to avoid dependencies, full compatibility with the open standard ODF structures and that AI be completely optional.

This last condition is critical for the IT departments that deploy the suite on hundreds or thousands of computers where internal regulations veto these tools. After establishing these conditions, the foundation states that there is currently no commercial AI solution that meets all of them to justify its activation as standard in the code base.

The foundation’s position contrasts with the commercial aggressiveness of the large proprietary platforms. However, LibreOffice developers are not unreasonably opposed to AI. In reality, the package maintains the path of independent extensions. With certain plugins it is possible to link the word processor with local execution environments such as Ollama or LM Studio, processing queries directly on the machine without exposing the document to external servers.