- Some early adopters of Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot, are less than impressed, The Wall Street Journal reports.
- Initial users balked at the high cost and said the AI would hallucinate incorrect answers.
- Microsoft is investing billions of dollars in its AI products.
Microsoft is making a big bet on AI with its newly launched generative AI assistant Copilot, but some early adopters aren’t too impressed.
A team-up between Microsoft and OpenAI, Copilot connects to Microsoft’s ubiquitous suite of apps, including Word, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, and Excel, to generate documents and presentations, and summarize meetings and emails.
Available for approximately 6 months.
Some companies testing Copilot say it saves them time.
Chemical company Dow plans to deploy CoPilot to half of its 35,900 employees by the end of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal, which praised the tool’s “tremendous efficiency gains.” Lenovo, another early adopter, agrees, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But some people aren’t sure whether Copilot is worth the $30 per person price (in addition to a Microsoft 365 subscription), the Journal reports.
Critics told the Journal that Copilot’s Excel and PowerPoint integration is not always reliable or accurate. According to the report, some people say the AI hallucinated the wrong answer or miscalculated the spreadsheet.
Some AI experts said on social media that it was created by Copilot. Strange suggestions for weekend meetings and I messed up while making P.ownerPoint slide.
A representative for hardware maker Juniper, which has been testing Copilot since November, told the Journal that the company is not yet ready to purchase the product for all of its employees.
Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate VP of modern operations and business applications, told Business Insider that customers see immediate value in Copilot, but take into account that “AI is unlike any technology we’ve seen before.” He then said that he acknowledged the complexity of the product.
“In just three months, 70 percent of users said they were more productive and 68 percent said Microsoft Copilot improved the quality of their work,” Spataro said in a statement about early users. “We are listening to your feedback and will continue to strive to make Copilot even better in the future.”
Microsoft began rolling out Copilot in November, forcing businesses to commit to a minimum of 300 subscriptions.
In January, it launched subscriptions for smaller groups. And earlier this month, the tech giant implemented Copilot internally, Business Insider’s Ashley Stewart reported at the time.
Microsoft is committed to its vision for the future of AI, investing $13 billion in OpenAI.
The company promoted CoPilot on Sunday in its first Super Bowl commercial in four years, and CEO Satya Nadella previously touted CoPilot, comparing it to the adoption of personal computers.
