Based on the experience of 20 years ago, though, users are _extremely_ turned off by it. There's little reason to think this has changed (if anything it is likely more pronounced because Clippy came in kinda without baggage, whereas LLMs have a lot of baggage and most of it ain't great).
> It's a design that's in companies' best interests.
I really don't think it is. Clippy was reputationaly damaging to Microsoft and they had to get rid of it. There's little reason to think this will be different.
Modern Big Tech doesn't particularly care what users think. They know they have network effects on their side and that switching costs are high. So what if it's "reputationally damaging?" What are users going to do? They're just resources to be exploited. Microsoft, Google, and their ilk can treat users with contempt if it means more control and more shareholder value.
> It's a design that's in companies' best interests.
I really don't think it is. Clippy was reputationaly damaging to Microsoft and they had to get rid of it. There's little reason to think this will be different.