The Document Foundation announced the most downloaded LibreOffice version in its history with the 26.8 release, while firmly maintaining its stance against default AI integration to safeguard privacy and open standards.
LibreOffice has logged the strongest launch week in its history, with The Document Foundation saying the 26.8 release was downloaded 1,031,162 times from its official page in the first seven days. That figure does not include users on GNU/Linux distributions, where the suite is often installed through package repositories rather than direct downloads. The release is the latest stable version available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the project says it brings a mix of new features, performance improvements and bug fixes.
The milestone was followed quickly by a clear statement of principle: “Yes, no AI is now a feature”. In a blog post, The Document Foundation argued that an office suite used in schools, hospitals, public bodies, law firms and similar organisations should not ship with artificial intelligence switched on by default unless it fits LibreOffice’s core design goals. The foundation said it does not reject AI as a technology, but it does reject default integration that could compromise privacy, control or portability.
That position is closely tied to two long-standing LibreOffice priorities: no telemetry and no vendor lock-in. The foundation says the suite does not collect usage data, and it wants any future AI feature to follow the same rule. It also insists that AI integration should not depend on a single company’s API, because that would tie users to one provider’s infrastructure. Instead, it favours open interfaces that can work with multiple local or remote back ends, while keeping document output in OpenDocument format.
For now, the result is simple: LibreOffice will continue to ship without built-in AI. The foundation says administrators should be able to add or remove such features as they see fit, and users who do not want them should not have to see them in the interface. It is not ruling AI out permanently, however. The project says it will revisit the question as local inference becomes more practical on standard hardware and open models improve. Users who want AI features already have third-party extensions, including tools that connect to local models through Ollama and LM Studio, or to services compatible with OpenAI endpoints, but those are maintained outside The Document Foundation.
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