You know something's wrong when Clippy fills you with nostalgia for simpler times

There are some things that can't be unseen, including Microsoft posting a hand-drawn image of the company's infamous assistant, Clippy, on social media. The drawing was posted on X earlier this week and was broadly welcomed by users. However, we suspect many were too young to remember the horror unleashed when the assistant …

[cyberdemon]

Good Grief

The AI impression of itself is as some kind of demonic tick, with fish-hooks for arms, with which to painfully latch on to you, never to be removed

Surely, the stuff of nightmares

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Good Grief

I had it more as a wasp or more likely a hornet, but with quite similar sentiments.

[Andrew Scott]

Re: Good Grief

Army ant's head is my first thought.

[Rafael #872397]

Feh!

For truly unbridled horror bring back Microsoft Bob!

[herman]

Re: Feh!

I once installed Bob in a VM just to see what it was about and it truly was awful.

[Antony Shepherd]

Re: Feh!

Pretty certain I had a demo disc of Microsoft Bob once.

We used to joke that it was named Bob after the evil entity in Twin Peaks.

Only it was more evil.

Then again I'd not be surprised at Microsoft Bob II - now with AI!

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Re: Feh!

The 10th March this year is Bob's 30th birthday.

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

CoClippy

It looks like ...

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: CoClippy

It was east to turn Clippy off and simple to uninstall it.

IIRC it lasted long enough to annoy me writing a company memo at which point it popped up with "hi, it looks like you're writing a letter" before being uninstalled from my company PC. Our IT team eventually had it turned off by default for all new machines.

Copilot looks like the computer equivalent of Malaria. You can get rid of it but it will come back at some point whether you like it or not.

[Ken Shabby]

Re: CoClippy

I see you are writing a suicide note, would you like help with that?

[original_rwg]

Paperclip

Struggling to see how the text description included the word 'paperclip'.

[43300]

Copilot is MUCH worse than Clippy - he only appeared in specific contexts rather than everywhere, and so far as I recall you could turn him off, which is pretty much impossible with Copilot.

[Dan 55]

You thought you could turn him off, but he'll be back.

[Neil Barnes]

help users rather than increase shareholder value

It's always been about shareholder value. It's just that they weren't quite so desperate in Clippy's day.

[steamnut]

Reptile?

I looks more like the head of a snake with fangs at the ready in order to paralyse you before consumption.

[captain veg]

new name

Coprolite anyone?

-A.

[Snake]

Re: new name

You don't want to know how the subhead registered in my brain for a moment:

"It looks like you want to urinate Windows users"

Icon: because beer is the cause of...?? :p

[Anonymous Coward]

"Copilot has become a slightly toxic brand"

Come on. It's never been anywhere near THAT welcome!

[Eclectic Man]

Clippy seemed to have been based ...

... on the assumption that the users of MSWord were incompetent.

And no, I am not going to claim that as a 'right-pondian' I have a superior education / intellect or anything else to 'USAfolk'. I've met lots of erudite, intelligent and coherent North Americans who I am sure were equally horrified at Clippy's intrusive 'suggestions'.

I remember the dread of having to write anything in MSWORD and figuring out how to get rid of 'Clippy' so that I could actually write the paper, letter, report or whatever. You may not believe it from my posts, but I am capable of writing grammatically correct, complete sentences, paragraphs stating a concept and explaining it, and getting the opening salutation and closing statements correct without external 'help'. Clippy was condescending, demeaning and extremely irritating, just glad I've got TeX now so can do what I like. I have no nostalgia for that 'abomination' at all.

[John Miles]

I actually had someone want Clippy back - well the cat character not the paper clip.

The worst thing about Clippy was they replaced a good search the help tool in Office 95 with Clippy in Office 97 - back when no Internet to desk at work and only dial up at home.

[ThatOne]

> they replaced a good search the help tool in Office 95 with Clippy in Office 97

"If it works, fix it"... That has been the motto of Microsoft since last century. They just have gotten better at it in the recent years.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"If it works, fix it"

"Fix" wasn't the first verb that came to mind there but did start with F.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Bebu sa Ware - Re: "If it works, fix it"

Let me see, starts with an F and has four letters ? I wonder what could that be....

[ThatOne]

Re: "If it works, fix it"

> "Fix" wasn't the first verb that came to mind

I'd speculate that you don't work for Microsoft?

[BossHobo]

NoPilot

My work laptop automatically installed copilot, then came up with a pop up that copilot is blocked on this machine. The same work laptop that they've disabled but not yet bothered to uninstall Connect Secure... I need to retire.

[Sceptic Tank]

I have to use Windows. Send over the St. Bernard with the brandy.

Windows XP had that stupid search dog in explorer. If you switched the search "assistant" off it showed you its rear end. I wondered if it was a subtle message from the development team for not wanting to use their juvenile search tool. I was actually just always happy to see the back of that thing after an XP install.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

woah there!

Clippy the Anomalocaris ?

Somebody's making it up as they go....