Updated

Updated · OMG! Ubuntu! · Aug 26

LibreOffice Releases 26.8 With New Paragraph Composer as Suite Rejects AI Features

Updated

Updated · OMG! Ubuntu! · Aug 26

LibreOffice Releases 26.8 With New Paragraph Composer as Suite Rejects AI Features

Q: What hidden privacy danger pushed LibreOffice to completely reject the tech industry's biggest AI trend in its newest update?

LibreOffice rejected generative AI in 26.8 because The Document Foundation sees a core privacy risk in how many AI features work: they require users’ documents to be sent to remote servers for processing. That is the “hidden” danger behind the decision. Office files often contain sensitive business, legal, financial, medical or personal information, and once that content is uploaded to an external AI service, users may lose direct control over where it is stored, how long it is retained, who can access it, and whether it could be used to improve models. The foundation’s public position is that privacy-sensitive users need software that works fully offline and does not transmit document contents to outside services. The wider context strengthens that argument. LibreOffice and outside coverage around the release emphasized that the suite does not send documents to remote services, does not require an internet connection for core work, and does not collect telemetry in the way many commercial platforms do. That puts it in direct contrast with the broader industry push to embed AI assistants into office software. So the issue was not opposition to AI as a concept. It was the risk that AI-powered document features could turn private files into data handled by third-party systems beyond the user’s immediate control. For LibreOffice, avoiding that exposure was more important than following the industry trend.

3 articles · Updated · OMG! Ubuntu! · Aug 26

LibreOffice 26.8 is out for Windows, macOS and Linux, adding a new Paragraph Composer in Writer that balances justified-text spacing across multiple lines for smoother page layout.
The release also targets multilingual and typography workflows with variable OpenType fonts, automatic right-to-left text detection in Writer and Calc, and baseline grid alignment for text in frames.
Calc and other apps get interoperability and usability upgrades: Excel chart files are no longer damaged after round-tripping, pivot tables gain calculated fields, and Impress and Draw now support multiple page sizes in one document.
The Document Foundation also used the release to stress privacy, saying 26.8 remains generative-AI-free and requires no network access, so documents do not leave the machine.
LibreOffice 26.8 is available now via the project website, Snap, Flatpak and PPA options, and is set to ship in Ubuntu 26.10 in October.