How do I disable the "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Host [etc]" feature?

Question

We have started getting complaints from our customers over this "feature" as it appears to be quite the resource hog, and of course they are blaming our add-ins.

Killing the ai.exe process appears to have no ill effect on the usability of Office programs such as Word, Outlook or Excel.

So I need to know how we can disable it. I'd prefer to give an instruction to our users on how they can switch off a feature they do not want, they feel they do not need, and that causes their old PCs to start sounding like a Harrier Jet taking off.

Thank you

Answer 1

Hello Giuseppe Carafa

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

I am aware of the present situation is that you need to disable a component of the Microsoft Suite. Could you please check if the current scenario is shown below:

This thread is generally integrated into the the Microsoft 365 suite, if it is taking up too many resources. You should be able to find it by navigating to the following path:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX64\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\ai.exe

After my tests, if you delete ai.exe, the task manager process will not have this program. However, this may be restored in the next update, which is probably by design. You can also refer to the following professional answers from Joshua Burkholder ( MSFT ) Microsoft Employee for some insights that may answer your concerns:

OFFICE16 ai.exe - Microsoft Community

Best regards,

Chandy |Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Hello Chandy,

I understand that deleting the .exe will "obviously" disable it but you need to appreciate that we are dealing with end users. Asking them to do something that to you and I would be a very simple thing to do would be too much to ask of them. Also consider that we have to support many users, some of which are on equipment that doesn't always meet the sort of minimum standards that we would expect from equipment these days.

So I can instruct our Support team to delete the .exe but as you already point out there is no guarantee that it will not resurface after an update. That is not acceptable in the long run. We need to have an option in Microsoft Office products where we can turn the feature off.

Answer 3

Obviously this is not possible in the current version, so if you need this option, you can only give feedback and expect the developers to add this feature.

Answer 4

Indeed. If this isn't the correct place to do that, can you direct me to same?

Answer 5

Trying to post your idea here:

Word · Community (microsoft.com)

However, based on my testing and enquiries, ai.exe may be integrated into other Office applications, which may not be what users want. But it is undeniable that this will become a trend.

Best Regards.