https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech…s-of-each-will-clear-up-confusion/ar-AA1NJPww
Over the past few years, Microsoft has doubled down on its generative AI efforts, especially after making a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. More recently, CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company was shifting focus from Bill Gates’ software factory vision, diversifying its portfolio into intelligence, integration, and AI.
Not too long ago, our Executive Editor Jez Corden criticized Microsoft’s branding strategy, calling it poor and misguided, particularly highlighting the rebranding of Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365, and more recently, the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Microsoft 365 itself was an absurdist idea, throwing away decades of cultural muscle memory for what feels like an ideological effort rather than one based on good sense. Calling it Microsoft 365 Copilot, before Copilot is even really a thing, again strikes me as completely odd.
Exec Editor at Windows Central, Jez Corden
“Copilot isn’t ready for the prime time in my view, operating as a basic web wrapper for ChatGPT with painfully limited system-level integration, features, and capabilities,” added Corden. And as it now seems, Microsoft seems to share similar sentiments and could potentially be in the process of addressing its over-the-top Copilot branding across its tech stack.
Right now, two Copilot apps are available across mobile app stores. The first was built by Microsoft from the ground up to meet consumer needs, while the other is a simple rebrand of the Microsoft Office app.
To an average user, it might be difficult to tell these apps apart, especially since they consistently share a similar user experience, which means that they could just as easily overlook productivity tools like Excel and Word built into the platform.
In a recent town hall meeting, a Microsoft employee asked what measures the company is putting in place to address the confusion that users might feel when interacting with these tools (via Business Insider).
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared an interesting approach and solution for this issue:
“The one way to make it less confusing is to have a billion users of each. Quite honestly, the best answer to a lot of the confusion is just daily usage, right?”
The executive argued that the context of the product should help clear up any confusion about it. To state his case, Nadella indicated that no one is confused about GitHub Copilot and its capabilities.
He further indicated that the tech giant’s customers have adapted to their tech stack, which allows them to easily switch between personal accounts and even maintain separate work or school accounts.
That said, I think you’re right. We do need to ensure that our marketing approach and our branding approach conveys this.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella
Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer, Yusuf Mehdi, says approximately 100 million monthly active users already interact with both Copilots simultaneously.
However, Microsoft is doubling down on its marketing strategy as Mehdi, AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman (lead of consumer Copilot division), and Rajesh Jha (Microsoft 365 Copilot lead), will decide how each product is presented and marketed to consumers. For instance, PCs for Microsoft’s enterprise clients will ship with Microsoft 365 Copilot preinstalled.
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Me: Co-Pilot seems very much a thing to me. It feels about two years old. If it is ‘not ready for prime time’ it is more likely past its sell-by date. Maybe the organisation can’t execute on *anything* these days, but it may do ok as a ‘late curve proven technology several years behind the bleeding edge’ which is what most businesses actually need.
Of course, if they ship it and it works that well, it won’t have been by intention. That’s just asking too much, like for Google to not actually Be Evil.
Let that sink in. Nadella actually thought it would be economically feasible to do a ginormous A/B test without randomization, and with a billion experimental subjects in each treatment group.
He may well be right. The only way to explain anything to MSFT upper management-level is to have a giant race between two teams and execute the losers. It just seems their natural style. ‘Hey, the one where we still have most of a billion users must have won. Those other billion users were losers anyway. We don’t want that kind of customer.’
Very Aztec.
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