If you’re old enough to remember when 8MB thumb drives hit the scene, you’ll probably remember Clippy,Microsoft’s digital writing assistant. Clippy lived in the bottom corner of Microsoft Office from 1996 to 2003, but now he can return to your desktop with a new life as a mouthpiecefor AI, thanks to anew projectfrom software engineer Felix Rieseberg.
This odd couple of 90’s UI design and the modern-day AI craze provides potential users the ability to set up anylocally installed LLMand use Clippy as its mouthpiece. Many of the most popular publicly-available LLMs will function with Clippy, with one-click installation supported for the newest fromGoogle, Meta, Microsoft, and Qwen. Clippy’s original art and animations are joined by a Windows 98-styled chat and settings window.
On installation, Clippy silently cycles through animations while the program automatically downloads Google’s Gemma3-1B model. Once paired with an LLM, the Clippy-bot approximates the original Clippy’s tone thanks to a lengthy prompt instruction that seeks to disguise the model in use. Users are able to edit or replace this starting prompt to get their most Clippy-esque experience (or to give your Clippy more of his highly-memed snark).
Rieseberg, creator of new Clippy, refers to the program as “a love letter and homage to the late, great Clippy,” as well as Microsoft’s 90s visual aesthetic. He calls the app a piece of “software art,” or, if you don’t like it, “software satire.” There is certainly something to be said about the relationship between an artist and programmer designing a quirky writing aide character, and a chatbot later told to attempt to emulate that work — though the list of people waxing philosophical about Clippy likely doesn’t extend far beyond this author.
We’ve seenClippy replacements before, but this new-and-improved paperclip doesn’t require access to a paid tier of ChatGPT, nor does it seek to modernize Clippy’s look to match Windows’ newer design sensibilities. This is the Clippy you know and love (?): a more 90’s-looking blend of old and new computing sensibilities.
The Clippy Desktop Assistant is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux via theproject’s website, with a deeper look behind the curtain available onGithub. While it’s not likely to revolutionize any desktop workflows, this new Clippy stands at the ready for those happy few with one foot in the vector-graphics of the 90s… and the other in the AI-present.
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Sunny Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom’s. From APUs to RGB, Sunny has a handle on all the latest tech news.
