Who asked for this?
Two things crossed my newsfeed last week that made me wonder who asked for these “features?”
- Employees can bring Copilot from their personal Microsoft 365 plans to work – what it means for IT.
- Forget vibe coding; “vibe working” is Microsoft’s next big plan
Both of these reek of Microsoft desperately trying to get more people using Copilot. The move to vibe working is consistent with the recent change to redirect all users attempting to access office.com to a Copilot interface. Microsoft, a company that has made billions building tools, now expects you not to use them directly.
This is the future according to Microsoft, but I wonder who wants to work this way? Personally, I don’t. I also don’t want Copilot writing for me. It’s fine for outlining and correcting my grammar, but I would hate to think that I’m letting Copilot communicate on my behalf. There are numerous problems caused by poor communication in the workplace. Using AI instead of communicating directly from my human brain is a recipe for that to get worse.
Regarding using a personal Copilot plan on your work device, I again wonder who requested this. Microsoft is inviting users to become a shadow IT problem. They are complicating things for IT admins and data security folks. They are claiming that any work documents where the personal Copilot tools are used remain in the tenant and are subject to EDP. However, we also need to recognize that there’s a reason those users don’t have a license.
I also wonder what real benefit there is to users. They have no access to the tools that require a paid Copilot Enterprise license, so how is their personal Copilot Pro license providing something that they don’t already have with Enterprise Copilot Chat?
Both of these moves feel like a creepy sales move that I’ve seen in Legal Tech too often. Don’t pitch your product to the IT Department; pitch it to some unwitting attorney and get them to pressure the IT Department to pay for it.
The message I’m getting from Microsoft is that your organization didn’t purchase a license for you, so you’re being left behind without the magic agents that everyone will be using. You can always buy your own and use it on your work documents, though.
As I’ve said many times, Microsoft has invested too much money in AI to let users opt out of using it, even if it does ruin everything Microsoft has been known for.
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