AI applications that are less popular than expected?

Despite Microsoft's full investment in the AI field, Copilot seems to have a mediocre response.

According to media reports, Microsoft's AI assistant, Copilot, has been in the trial phase for over six months, and trial users have commented that it is useful but not satisfactory.

The report cited opinions that the Excel and PowerPoint software integrated with Copilot services have some flaws and are prone to errors. Trial users feel that the monthly subscription fee of $30 may not be as "valuable" as expected.

Some users have also expressed on social media that Copilot is "not very reliable" in scheduling. AI expert Ethan Mollick tweeted:

"Copilot for Outlook does not deliver the most useful feature of an AI email assistant - scheduling."

"When it gives me the option of 'acceptable and suggested times,' the times it schedules are already booked or on Saturdays."

Sharon Mandell, the Chief Information Officer of Juniper Networks, a networking hardware company that has been using Copilot since November last year, said:

"I can't say we're ready to spend $30 for every employee in the company."

Mixed Reviews for Copilot

As the "vanguard" of AI PCs, Microsoft has been increasing the "Copilot content" in Windows in recent years.

In January of this year, Microsoft opened up Copilot subscriptions to smaller enterprise groups.

Last week, Microsoft's first Super Bowl ad in four years focused on Copilot, promoting it as a tool that can help young people achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.

It has been six months since Copilot was officially launched, and the evaluations are mixed. The positive reviews mainly focus on "improving efficiency."

Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Modern Work and Business Applications, told the media that the value of Copilot to users is evident:

"In just three months, 70% of users have increased their work efficiency, and 68% of users say Copilot has improved the quality of their work... We are listening to customer feedback and will continue to work hard to make Copilot better over time." In November, Microsoft conducted a survey of early users of Copilot and found that 77% of them were willing to continue using the software because it saved employees' time. Microsoft had previously stated that the AI-generated meeting summary feature could save about 30 minutes of time, while the AI-assisted writing feature could save 6 minutes of initial draft writing time.

Melanie Kalmar, CIO and Chief Digital Officer of Dow Chemical, said that the company plans to promote Copilot to half of its employees by the end of 2024 after the trial phase with approximately 300 people, as it "greatly improves efficiency".

However, the trial phase of Copilot also encountered various issues. In addition to the aforementioned problems, some users reported that Copilot would sometimes have hallucinations and respond out of nowhere, and sometimes make mistakes in meeting summaries.

According to media reports, when Microsoft provided Copilot services to enterprises last year, companies were required to sign at least 300 contracts. A Microsoft software distributor revealed that many companies were unwilling to make such a commitment for unproven software.

Some early users expressed that their initial excitement for AI tools quickly faded. Microsoft stated that, except for Teams, which supports AI transcription of meeting content, the usage rate of Copilot for most software decreased by about 20% after one month.

Various factors have made many companies still in a "wait-and-see" state regarding the comprehensive application of AI.

A survey by Boston Consulting Group showed that although nearly 90% of executives in companies stated that generative AI is their top priority this year, nearly two-thirds of them also stated that this technology will take at least two years to surpass the level of hype and publicity. Among them, about 70% of people are only interested in small-scale and limited AI application trials.

Spataro stated that the company plans to address user attrition by adding more reminders and prompts.

Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, believes that Copilot is crucial to Microsoft's stock price:

"Copilot must succeed for the stock to rise."

Microsoft's AI Applications Have Pros and Cons

To take the lead in the AI field, Microsoft has already made billions of dollars in investments, having invested $13 billion in OpenAI so far.

Under a series of actions by Microsoft betting heavily on AI since last year, the company's stock price has been soaring, with a cumulative increase of about 50% to date. In the latest earnings conference call, Microsoft CEO Nadella stated: "We have moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale." However, at present, Microsoft's AI applications are far from being a complete success.

In 2022, Microsoft released GitHub Copilot, which uses artificial intelligence to help programmers write code faster. Microsoft executives stated that the starting price for this feature is $10 per month, and it currently has 1.3 million users, a 30% increase from the previous quarter.

In May of last year, Microsoft officially launched New Bing, which incorporates intelligent chatbots and AI question-answering functions into its search engine.

However, New Bing has not posed a threat to Google's market share. Microsoft executives had previously anticipated that if Bing's market share exceeded Google's, it could bring in billions of dollars in new revenue. However, after nearly a year of using this AI application, Bing's market share has increased by less than 1%.