I hate AI with a seething passion. Not only is it literal theft (every prompt steals from real artists, writers, developers, and more), it’s destroying our planet. Just one prompt uses up excessive amounts of our clean drinking water. We have a limited supply of drinking water and no one has any idea when it’s gonna run out, but AI is moving that date forward quickly.
There also is the health impact. Communities with AI data centers are seeing an increase in illness including cancer and even death. People are dying because of AI. Children are getting cancer from the groundwater that’s being poisoned by AI. It could happen to any of us here in the states as AI data centers are popping up everywhere.
Because I am so concerned about the environment, I’ve wanted to find alternatives to programs I use that are forcing AI into them. These include things like Microsoft Office Suite and Google Drive. People don’t want AI in their products and this is why alternatives are cropping up. Ashtyn and I need a lot of these tools for our work. We collaborate regularly and Drive was a huge part of ensuring we can work together. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance Drive has already scanned our files and so we have spent time working to remove them from Google Drive after we found a suitable alternative.
Microsoft is doing something similar with Office. It’s forcing AI into a program that literal writers depend on. It was past time for us to find an alternative. While I have been using our Google Drive alternative and like it quite a bit, I still haven’t used the Office alternative enough to be 100% certain that I would recommend it. I will however give you the name because I feel like you deserve access to the information I can tell you about these products.
I also want to add that in either case I have not paid anything for either of these alternatives. Microsoft Office, alone, is a hefty price to pay for software that has AI in it. Having a free alternative is great. That being said just because it is free doesn’t mean it won’t come without a downside. Even the Google Drive alternative has one small downside, but I’m told that will be eliminated shortly. I will explain what that is when I talk about that program.
So, without further ado let’s get to it.
ELLIPSUS
Where to Get It: https://ellipsus.com
Ellipsus is our choice for Google Drive replacement software. Ellipsus offers a collaborative environment where you and your writing partner can work together to create, share, write, and develop documents. You can share each document to create with a variety of levels of access for your collaborators.
There are a few downsides to this, but as a collaborative writing program it’s fantastic. In fact, it’s on par if not better than Google Drive specifically for writing collaboration. While Drive also has various other things you can create like spreadsheets, that’s not available with Ellipsus. This is specifically for writing and collaborating on written documents. As co-writers of television and movies, the software is the best we have found.
The one downside I have found is that you can’t currently share folders so we have to share each individual document. With the amount of documents we have, sharing folders is essential. Luckily, the software is getting updates every month and the next thing they are working on is folder sharing! So, this won’t be a problem for long. But for now, it is slightly annoying that we have to go into individual documents and Ashtyn has to create everything because she is the holder of the folders.
Things I really like about Ellipsus
I’m not gonna lie, I am a vain bitch! I love my themes. You can use dark mode, but that’s just the beginning. My theme is actually rainbow. Ashtyn has one similar. You can make it look how you want.
I like that you can write in the same document. That is what I liked about Google Drive. We can both be in the document sharing our thoughts at the same time. It makes collaborating super easy and I don’t think I will ever go back to Google.
Not only does Ellipsus say they will NEVER use AI, it’s way cuter and just as functional as Drive. I am so excited for all the new features they will be adding!
10/10 – HIGHLY RECOMMEND
LibreOffice
Where to Get: https://www.libreoffice.org/
LibreOffice is the current Microsoft Office substitute we are using. As writers, Microsoft is allowing AI access to your words and your data. I’m uncomfortable with that, so I’m not willing to use Word or any other Microsoft product if I can help it.
LibreOffice is open source. It’s community driven so the community is updating it and making it better. Because it is open source, you may experience some issues. My biggest issue is, it is sometimes slow to load. But it reminds me a lot of Office, and seems to function similarly. I haven’t had any problems getting my work done because of the issues I’ve experienced.
That being said YMMV.
This is a program suite, so it includes multiple programs. It’s just like Office in that way. The programs include:
Writer – the word processing software similar to Word
Calc – spreadsheets like Excel
Impress – make presentations similar to PowerPoint
Draw – edit vector graphics
Base – database management software similar to Access
Math – formula editing software
I’ve only tried Writer but I haven’t had a need to make a slideshow or spreadsheets. I’m interested to find out about how Calc works especially since I have stopped using Google, as well, which is what we used to tabulate our data for our previous film studies (Microsoft Sheets).
Things I really like about LibreOffice
First and foremost, you cannot beat a free set of programs. The fact the software is free is great. Also, the fact it is community driven means that you are more likely to get any features you want added. If you felt Office was missing something or could’ve done something better you can recommend features to the developers that are doing things for this.
I also like that it really resembles Office. I have opened up the programs and they seemed to at least look similar. Writer works quite similarly to Word. It looks like Word. That’s a huge benefit if you struggle with using new programs. I don’t have to learn something new and that often keeps me from moving to different programs. But thanks to the interface looking similar I don’t have that problem with LibreOffice.
Saving things to PDF is a smooth experience. One of the things I used Office for a lot was converting to PDF. The process is pretty much identical in LibreOffice. You just click save/convert to PDF and it saves. It’s easy!
My one concern is that there are still some bugs, and the program does seem to run a little slowly. I’m hoping future updates will address this.
I’m horrified that Microsoft insists on forcing us to use AI. So, it was time to move on. It also saves my pocketbook quite a bit of money.
6/10 – Cautiously Recommending
So, I highly recommend Ellipsus, and I think LibreOffice is worth considering. If you want to get out from AI, now is your chance. Check these programs out and let us know what you think in the comments!
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