In short: Microsoft has spent billions building Copilot into every corner of its product lineup, pitching it as an indispensable AI co-worker. Its own Terms of Use tell a different story. A clause quietly buried in the document labels Copilot “for entertainment purposes only” and warns users not to rely on it for important advice. The gap between the marketing and the fine print has drawn fresh scrutiny as adoption figures reveal that fewer than one in 30 eligible users is actually paying for the tool.

Somewhere between Satya Nadella’s earnings calls and the product pages promising to “transform the way you work,” Microsoft inserted a sentence into Copilot’s Terms of Use that reads rather differently from the rest of its AI pitch. Updated in October 2025 and surfacing widely in early April 2026, the clause appears under a section in bold capital letters labelled “IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES & WARNINGS.” It says: “Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.”

The same document states that Microsoft makes no warranty or representation of any kind about Copilot, that users should not assume its outputs are free from copyright, trademark, or privacy rights infringement, and that users are solely responsible for any Copilot content they choose to share or publish. The terms apply to consumer Copilot products; the enterprise-facing Microsoft 365 Copilot is excluded from the clause.

What Microsoft has been saying publicly

The disclaimer sits in sharp contrast to years of aggressive promotion. Since integrating Copilot across Windows 11 and the Microsoft 365 suite in 2023, the company has positioned the tool as a productivity multiplier, its “AI companion” for workers in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Nadella has described Copilot as “becoming a true daily habit” and told investors that daily active users had grown nearly threefold year on year. The company spent approximately $80 billion on AI-related capital expenditure in fiscal year 2025, including a $13 billion investment in OpenAI whose models underpin Copilot’s core capabilities.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is priced at $30 per user per month as an enterprise add-on, with a business tier at $18 per user per month. Premium consumer tiers carry costs that reach into the tens of dollars monthly. “Entertainment purposes only” is not language typically associated with a product charging at those rates.

The legal logic behind the clause

Legal analysts who reviewed the language offered a measured interpretation. The most widely cited read is that the clause represents a lawyer’s attempt to limit liability in circumstances where the product fails, an overcorrection that has become embarrassing because of how bluntly it contradicts the marketing. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic all include similar advisories in their terms of service, acknowledging inaccuracy and placing responsibility for verifying outputs on users. None of them, however, uses the phrase “entertainment purposes only,” which Android Authority noted is “the same disclaimer that a psychic uses to avoid getting sued.”

The broader legal context matters. Microsoft has faced litigation over Copilot’s outputs before: a class-action suit in a US federal court in San Francisco challenged the legality of GitHub Copilot over alleged open-source licence violations, and a separate dispute in Australia concerned customers who were moved to more expensive plans with Copilot bundled in. The consumer Copilot ToS language, on this reading, is corporate defensiveness made explicit, an attempt to establish in writing that the product never warranted the reliance users might have placed on it.

The adoption numbers that give context

The disclaimer arrives at an awkward moment for Copilot’s commercial trajectory. Data published in early 2026 showed that only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who have access to Copilot Chat actually pay for it. Of roughly 450 million Microsoft 365 seats, 15 million are paid Copilot subscribers, a conversion rate that reflects the difficulty of persuading existing users to pay a significant premium for AI they find unreliable.

Research from Recon Analytics traced the problem in part to accuracy. Its tracking of Copilot’s accuracy Net Promoter Score found it at -3.5 in July 2025, deteriorating to -24.1 by September 2025, and only partially recovering to -19.8 by January 2026. In surveys of lapsed Copilot users, 44.2% cited distrust of answers as the primary reason they had stopped using the tool. Separately, the US paid subscriber market share fell from 18.8% in July 2025 to 11.5% in January 2026, a 39% contraction in six months. When users are given a choice between Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini, just 8% of workers opt for Copilot.

The hallucination record has not helped. In August 2024, Copilot falsely accused German court reporter Martin Bernklau of the crimes he had covered for years, describing him as a convicted child abuser and fraudster and providing his home address. Microsoft was forced to block queries about Bernklau after a data protection complaint. In January 2026, Copilot generated false claims about football-related violence, triggering further coverage of the tool’s reliability problem. The “entertainment purposes only” clause looks rather less like a legal technicality in that context, and rather more like an accurate description.

Microsoft’s pivot and what it means

Nadella’s response to Copilot’s uneven performance has been to assume direct control over AI product development, reportedly delegating other responsibilities from September 2025 onward to focus personally on the roadmap. The company has also begun building its own models. Microsoft’s launch of MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2 in April 2026 , its first proprietary AI model releases since renegotiating its contract with OpenAI in September 2025 — signals a strategic intent to reduce dependency on the models that currently sit under Copilot’s hood.

The irony is that Copilot’s limitations are well understood inside Microsoft. The company’s own leaked internal feedback, as reported by several outlets, described integrations that “don’t really work.” The ToS language is, in a sense, the legal department’s way of saying what the product team has been grappling with in private. The expectation that AI tools be trustworthy, verifiable, and fit for purpose has moved from aspiration to regulatory reality across multiple jurisdictions, making the gap between Copilot’s marketing and its terms of service harder to sustain.

None of this means Copilot is uniquely unreliable by the standards of the current generation of AI assistants. Its primary competitor, ChatGPT, has its own well-documented accuracy problems even as OpenAI pushes into commercialisation. The difference is that Microsoft bet earlier, louder, and more money on the proposition that AI assistants were ready to become essential workplace tools. The fine print in its own terms of service suggests the company is hedging on that bet while the marketing continues to double down on it. Competitors raising billions on promises of AI reliability will have noticed the opening. The race that defined 2025 is entering a phase where the gap between “for entertainment purposes only” and genuinely trustworthy AI is the most valuable real estate in the industry.

A growing number of bars and restaurants across the United States are embracing a phone-free experience, reflecting a broader cultural shift toward reducing screen time and encouraging real-world connection. From upscale supper clubs to neighborhood cocktail bars, establishments are introducing policies that either restrict phone usage or actively incentivize guests to put their devices away.

At the heart of this trend is a rising awareness of the negative effects smartphones and social media can have on attention, memory, and interpersonal relationships. Studies continue to highlight how constant digital engagement impacts learning, socialization, and even self-esteem. With Americans reportedly checking their phones around 144 times a day and spending nearly 4.5 hours on their devices, the pushback against screen dependency is gaining traction.

Younger generations, particularly Gen Z, are leading this shift

Surveys indicate that a significant portion of them intentionally disconnect from their devices, followed by millennials and older age groups. This growing appetite for “analog” experiences is now influencing the hospitality industry in noticeable ways.

Restaurants and bars in at least 11 U.S. states have already introduced some form of phone restriction. Washington, D.C., currently leads with the highest number of such venues. Some establishments take a strict approach, such as locking phones away in secure pouches for the duration of a visit, while others offer softer incentives like free desserts for diners who keep their devices off the table.

The reasoning behind these policies is simple: removing phones enhances human interaction. Business owners and industry experts argue that without digital distractions, guests are more engaged with their company, their surroundings, and even their food. Chefs have also noted that phones can detract from the dining experience, making meals feel less memorable.

For customers, the impact can be surprisingly profound

Many report feeling more present and emotionally connected during phone-free outings. Experiences that might otherwise be fragmented by notifications become more immersive and meaningful.

Looking ahead, the trend is expected to expand beyond independent venues. As digital fatigue continues to grow and awareness of screen-time effects increases, more mainstream chains and public spaces may experiment with similar policies. While not everyone may be ready to give up their phones during a night out, the rise of phone-free dining suggests a clear shift: people are beginning to value presence over perpetual connectivity.

Restaurants are finally pushing back against the constant glow of screens at the table, and honestly, it feels long overdue. Dining out was never meant to compete with notifications and endless scrolling. By nudging people to put their phones away, these places are restoring something we’ve quietly lost – real conversation, attention, and presence. It may feel restrictive at first, but the payoff is a far more meaningful experience.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. If you’re struggling with it but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: City of Angels.

Green group hint: Winter football.

Blue group hint: Like Hemsworth, but in hoops.

Purple group hint: Cinderellas.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: A Los Angeles athlete.

Green group: College football bowl games.

Blue group: Basketball Chrises.

Purple group: Men’s NCAA tournament 16-seeds.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is a Los Angeles athlete. The four answers are Clipper, King, Ram and Spark.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is college football bowl games. The four answers are Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is basketball Chrises. The four answers are Bosh, Mullin, Paul and Webber.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is men’s NCAA tournament 16-seeds. The four answers are Howard, Long Island, Prairie View A&M and Siena.

Samsung could be preparing to shake up its audio lineup with a radically different kind of earbuds – ones that don’t even rely on your ear canal. According to recent leaks, the company is working on a new product, possibly called “Galaxy Buds Able,” and early signs suggest these could use bone conduction technology instead of traditional speaker drivers.

Multiple leaks and certifications, including a recent appearance on India’s BIS database, indicate that the product is actively in development. While details remain limited, the unusual model numbering and repeated references across sources hint that this isn’t just another incremental Galaxy Buds refresh, but potentially an entirely new category.

Bone conduction audio works very differently from conventional earbuds

Instead of pushing sound waves through your ear canal, it sends vibrations through your skull directly to the inner ear, effectively bypassing the eardrum. This allows for an open-ear design, meaning users can still hear their surroundings while listening to audio—something traditional in-ear or noise-canceling earbuds often block out.

That shift matters more than it might seem. As wearable tech evolves, companies are increasingly looking at ways to blend digital experiences with real-world awareness. Bone conduction could make earbuds safer for outdoor use, more comfortable for long sessions, and even more accessible for users who struggle with in-ear designs. It also opens doors for new health and assistive applications, especially when combined with Samsung’s growing interest in wellness-focused audio features.

For users, the appeal is straightforward. Imagine listening to music, taking calls, or interacting with voice assistants without isolating yourself from your environment. Whether you’re commuting, working out, or just walking through a busy street, this kind of tech promises a more natural and less intrusive experience.

Looking ahead, timing could be key

Reports suggest Samsung may be positioning these earbuds for a major launch alongside its next-generation foldables, such as the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Flip 8. If that happens, the “Buds Able” could represent the company’s push into more experimental, next-gen hardware – going beyond iterative upgrades and into entirely new user experiences.

While nothing is official yet, the direction is clear: Samsung isn’t just refining earbuds anymore – it may be redefining how we hear them.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I must say, 6-Across really stumped me, but I get it now. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Transfusion cocktail = ___, ginger ale, grape juice and lime
Answer: VODKA

6A clue: Body guard?
Answer: APRON

7A clue: Temporary Instagram update
Answer: STORY

8A clue: Big name in hiking sandals
Answer: TEVA

9A clue: TV room
Answer: DEN

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Reaching far and wide
Answer: VAST

2D clue: Chose
Answer: OPTED

3D clue: Went by car
Answer: DROVE

4D clue: Book in a mosque, using a non-standard spelling
Answer: KORAN

5D clue: “Got ___ bright ideas?”
Answer: ANY

The Philips Hue Omniglow is the best Hue lightstrip yet. It’s a classier kind of LED strip: where other models have visible LEDs, the Omniglow delivers seamless color gradients and smoothly moving light effects. The results are very impressive and the Hue app makes it easy to select, edit or create scenes either solo or as part of a wider Hue setup. If you’ve already got a Hue system you can add it in seconds and then include it in your scenes and automations. As with other Hue lights you’ll need a Philips Hue Bridge or Bridge Pro to access advanced features such as custom scenes and smart home integration.

The Omniglow is easy to install and set up, although if you’re mounting it up high you might curse the short power cable. The only real downside is the length: you can shorten the Omniglow but not extend it, and longer versions are not widely available in the UK or US. While European customers can choose between 3m, 5m and 10m models, the US and UK are currently limited to the 3m model only.

Philips Hue Omniglow: price and availability

In short: Every time you visit LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, a hidden JavaScript routine silently probes your browser for more than 6,000 installed extensions, collects 48 hardware and software characteristics about your device, encrypts the resulting fingerprint, and attaches it to every API request you make during your session. The practice, labelled “BrowserGate” by researchers, is not disclosed in LinkedIn’s privacy policy. LinkedIn says it is a security measure; critics say it is covert surveillance of a billion users’ browsing behaviour at industrial scale.

There is a routine that runs on your computer every time you open LinkedIn. You cannot see it, you were not told about it, and it is not described in the company’s privacy policy. According to an investigation published in early April 2026 by Fairlinked e.V., a European association of commercial LinkedIn users, the platform injects a 2.7-megabyte JavaScript bundle into its website that silently scans visitors’ browsers for the presence of more than 6,000 specific Chrome extensions, assembles a detailed fingerprint of their hardware, encrypts it, and transmits the result to LinkedIn’s servers, where it is attached to every subsequent action taken during the session.

The investigation, independently confirmed by BleepingComputer, which verified the scanning behaviour through its own testing, has been dubbed “BrowserGate.” LinkedIn disputes many of the report’s characterisations. The technical facts are not in dispute.

What the script does

LinkedIn calls its scanning system “Spectroscopy.” When a user loads the LinkedIn website, the script fires off up to 6,222 simultaneous requests, each one probing for a specific browser extension by attempting to access files associated with that extension’s ID. The presence or absence of a file in the response indicates whether the extension is installed. The entire operation runs silently in the background, without a visible prompt or notification of any kind.

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Beyond extensions, the script collects 48 distinct characteristics of the user’s device: CPU core count, available memory, screen resolution, timezone, language settings, battery status, audio hardware information, and storage capacity, among others. Individually, these attributes are unremarkable. Combined, they form a device fingerprint specific enough to identify a user even after cookies are cleared.

Once compiled, the data is serialised to JSON and encrypted using an RSA public key, LinkedIn’s internal identifier for the key is “apfcDfPK”,  before being transmitted to telemetry endpoints including li/track and /platform-telemetry/li/apfcDf. The fingerprint is then permanently injected as an HTTP header into every API request made during the session, meaning LinkedIn receives it with every search, every profile view, every message sent.

What it is looking for

The question of which extensions LinkedIn is scanning for makes the surveillance more sensitive than simple fraud detection would require. According to the BrowserGate report, LinkedIn’s list includes more than 200 products that compete directly with its own sales tools, among them Apollo, Lusha, and ZoomInfo. Because LinkedIn knows the employer of each registered user, systematically scanning for the presence of a competitor’s tool gives the platform visibility into which companies are evaluating or deploying rival products.

The list also reportedly includes tools associated with neurodivergent conditions, religious practice, political interests, and job-hunting activity, categories that, in the European Union, qualify as sensitive personal data subject to heightened protection under the General Data Protection Regulation. Knowing that a user is running a job-search extension, for instance, is a meaningful inference about their employment intentions, drawn without consent.

The scale of the operation has grown substantially over time. LinkedIn began scanning for 38 specific extensions in 2017. By 2024, that number had grown to 461. By February 2026, the list had reached 6,167, a 1,252% increase in two years. BleepingComputer’s testing confirmed the scanning was active as of early April 2026.

LinkedIn’s defence and the source of the report

LinkedIn’s response to BleepingComputer was pointed. “The claims made on the website linked here are plain wrong,” a spokesperson said. “The person behind them is subject to an account restriction for scraping and other violations of LinkedIn’s Terms of Service. To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members’ consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.” The company added that it does not use the data to “infer sensitive information about members.”

The platform’s characterisation of the source matters. Fairlinked e.V. is connected to Teamfluence Signal Systems OÜ, an Estonian company whose managing directors include Steven Morell and Jan Liebling. Teamfluence makes a Chrome extension, also called Teamfluence, that LinkedIn restricted for alleged terms of service violations. The company subsequently filed a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company and LinkedIn Germany GmbH at the Regional Court of Munich, alleging violations of the Digital Markets Act, EU competition law, and German data protection rules. In January 2026, the Munich court denied the injunction, finding that LinkedIn’s actions did not constitute unlawful obstruction or discrimination.

The financial dispute between the parties does not change the technical findings, which were verified independently. It does mean the framing of those findings is contested, and readers should weigh both the substance of the claim and its provenance.

The regulatory backdrop

This is not LinkedIn’s first serious encounter with European data protection enforcement. In October 2024, the Irish Data Protection Commission, which regulates LinkedIn in the EU through its Irish subsidiary, fined the company €310 million, approximately $334 million , for processing users’ personal data for targeted advertising without a valid legal basis. The decision found that LinkedIn’s consent mechanisms did not meet GDPR’s requirement that consent be “freely given.” LinkedIn was ordered to bring its data processing into compliance.

The BrowserGate investigation drops into that context. The legal question of whether scanning for 6,000 browser extensions constitutes processing of special-category personal data, and whether users’ lack of awareness of the practice renders any implied consent invalid,  is exactly the kind of question the Irish Data Protection Commission has already shown it is willing to adjoin in court. Europe’s evolving digital regulation framework has been moving steadily toward requiring explicit disclosure of all significant data collection, and a scanning operation of this scale, conducted without any mention in a privacy policy, appears difficult to square with that direction of travel.

LinkedIn is a Microsoft subsidiary, acquired in 2016 for $26.2 billion. Microsoft has been aggressively expanding its AI capabilities in 2026, with LinkedIn’s vast dataset of professional identity and employment history forming a significant part of the data infrastructure on which those capabilities rest. The relationship between LinkedIn’s data collection practices and Microsoft’s broader AI ambitions is not addressed in LinkedIn’s privacy policy either.

What this means for users

LinkedIn has more than one billion registered users. The majority access the platform through Chrome-based browsers, meaning the Spectroscopy scan runs routinely on the devices of a significant fraction of the global professional workforce, collecting a fingerprint that is precise enough to persist across cookie resets and potentially across devices.

Short of using a non-Chromium browser such as Firefox, which would limit but not necessarily eliminate LinkedIn’s fingerprinting capabilities, there is no user-facing setting that prevents the scanning. The platform does not offer an opt-out, because it does not disclose the practice in the first place. The 2026 push for governed and transparent AI and data practices is built on precisely the premise that invisible data collection of this kind should not be the default.

Whether regulators move quickly enough to change that default at LinkedIn’s scale remains to be seen. Security firms increasingly built to detect exactly this kind of covert data harvesting are becoming a growth sector in their own right, a market indicator that the gap between what platforms collect and what users understand is still very wide. The year 2025 normalised AI-powered data collection at a pace that regulation has yet to match. BrowserGate is a case study in what that lag looks like from the inside of a browser.