AI op-out is a lot like a free U2 album on your iPod

Microsoft and GitHub, not to mention rivals like Google, have gone all-in on a technology that a sizable or at least vocal portion of their customers simply don’t want. And with billions in capital expenditures to recoup, they’re making it difficult to avoid.

During Microsoft’s July 30, 2025 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella said GitHub Copilot continued to exhibit strong momentum and had reached 20 million users.

I mean 1. MSFT just flat out bought its way into the space between GitHub and VSCode (which Cursor is a fork of) and 2. its really easy to say you’ve reached 20 million users when its in your face in every single app.

I have my gripes but mostly because GitHub copilot is a first class citizen in GitHub.com and all other integrations are [bot]…

_{Quote Citation: Thomas Claburn, “GitHub Copilot on autopilot as community complaints persist • The Register”, Fri 5 Sep 2025 // 21:40 UTC, https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/github_copilot_complaints/}