Important to note that the article says it can save to Onedrive or cloud drive of your choice. Its not clear exactly how that works if you want to save to Box, or Dropbox or something else but it looks like the option is there and it seems like you may even be able to turn that off if you want.
If it’s still not your preference, I’ve seen licenses for office 2019 for sale on the web, which predates a lot of the cloud integration and AI tool nonsense. Between that and libre office there are ways to avoid using this service if you’re so inclined.
Important to note that the article says it can save to Onedrive or cloud drive of your choice. Its not clear exactly how that works if you want to save to Box, or Dropbox or something else but it looks like the option is there and it seems like you may even be able to turn that off if you want.
If it’s still not your preference, I’ve seen licenses for office 2019 for sale on the web, which predates a lot of the cloud integration and AI tool nonsense. Between that and libre office there are ways to avoid using this service if you’re so inclined.