By Zak Doffman
Publication Date: 2026-01-11 07:59:00
Major confusion for Office users.
Getty Images
Microsoft is now scrabbling to assure hundreds of millions of Office users after a viral backlash that came out of nowhere has gotten totally out of hand.
“Why is ‘Office is dead’ talk of the town again?” Windows Latest asks. The answer being viral posts on X, “particularly by Perplexity AI, claiming that Microsoft has killed the Office brand and that millions of users were now using AI overnight.”
“BREAKING,” Perplexity posted last week. “Microsoft just renamed Office to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app. 400 million users just became ‘AI users’ overnight.” This is a problem because the “AI everything” approach now being adopted by Microsoft and Google in particular raises significant security and privacy concerns.
It’s misleading, but the post remains live and has now garnered almost 4 million views. What actually happened is…