Ok; corporate death penalty for MicroSlop for the rampant theft crime spree they did to train copilot.

It is theft since the artists and creators have no say in it. There was plenty of open copyright material they could have used, but they didn't. They have admitted to the crime, why are you sticking up for them techdirt?

Are you sure? I'd consider Microsoft an expert on the topic.

Because copyright infringement isn't theft.

Legally (generally, caveat: jurisdiction) theft requires that the victim is deprived of ownership.

The article depends on a technicality that is routinely abused in courts all over the world.

He didn't say it was. He said it will be perceived as that.

millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.

Pretty sure they're breaking excel with ai slop, i have to restart excel every 20 minutes because it stops rendering the spreadsheet randomly.

For small excel files use LibreOffice. For big ones SQLite. Then you have access to much better tooling.

It's for work

C# with epplus loading data from Excel into an SQLite database and from the SQLite database to Excel files is extremely common in work environments.

Im not a dev my stuff is like locked down by IT but they do know about the issue and the guy is definitely open minded to trying other things.

Ask for 3 command line programs:

1. one that loads an excel file into an SQLite database with one table per tab (this will give you an easy import path)

2. one that exports a SQL query to an excel file. (This will enable easy export)

3. one that reads a text file containing formatting instructions (font size, color, merging cells, drop downs, vertical and horizontal alignment) and applies it to an excel file. (This enables common formatting templates and start you heading towards more custom automation workflows)