In Win11 Pro/Enterprise, this can be disabled via Group Policy alongside most other tracking and logging "features". In corporate environments, it often is. Their primary target here is individual consumers.

On the other hand, even on Home edition you can at least disable this yourself with a few registry tweaks or by using a tool like DoNotSpy11. I highly recommend checking it out if you're forced to use Windows but want some semblance of privacy.

Usually these are controlled via Group Policy and are standard enable/disable switches. Usually the Group Policy makes changes in the Registry, which can be applied manually to Home versions (but the registry switches don't always do anything on the Home version).

I say usually because while I'm on the sysadmin team, I'm not on the desktop config team at work, and I've been busy with other projects so I haven't dove into our latest standard Windows Server image and config (if this is even on the server version). I know we have to disable all of these AI features for regulatory and audit reasons, so it's definitely possible (and "easily" so, otherwise I'd have heard the cursing).

There's way too much of a legal minefield for Microsoft to not have these controls available to business customers, and we're probably only one big data breach away from it to be default off in enterprise environments if that isn't the default already. I haven't upgraded my personal Win 10 Pro install yet to see what the defaults are on a fresh Win 11 Pro/Enterprise install, but from what I read at least some of these features are only even possible to enable on devices with dedicated NPU hardware- "AI cores".

I hate this with a passion, it's important to stay aware of it, and everyone should take steps to disable it on their own Windows systems, but I'm not convinced it's the end of the world people are making it out to be. Just another item to add to the checklist of "shit I have to config to make Windows work for me if I'm going to keep using it".

As far as Microsoft's business sense goes, they're still "too big to fail" to care. Their business and government customers will disable it, the tech savvy individuals will disable it, the normal users probably won't even notice it. Linux unfortunately still isn't truly undermining them in user numbers, and while adoption numbers are up especially due to handhelds like the SteamDeck, they can safely ignore those as not being a true challenger their "desktop PC use" crown. I want Linux to win, and it's doing better than ever, but I've been waiting on the year of the Linux desktop for well over a decade now.

I daily W11 Enterprise IoT LTSC, and there is 0 AI bullshit installed, so there are no controls needed.