Worth Reading – Microsoft backtracks on Copilot Chat access in M365 apps
I would love to say that Microsoft is responding to customer complaints about having AI shoved down their throats at every turn, but somehow I don’t think that’s why this is happening:
Microsoft will remove access to its AI assistant in certain Office apps for the largest Microsoft 365 enterprise customers next month, and put usage restrictions in place for others.
It never made sense to me that they kept adding more features to the free version of Copilot for M365. Yes, they were also adding some advanced features in the paid version, but at some point, you are competing against yourself for the average AI user. It is definitely a shift, though. Add in the fact that this news also came out in the same week:
Microsoft to strip AI-generated recaps from Loop in surprising move
This is pulling away a feature from the paid version, which is very surprising. I assume either it didn’t work or the analytics show so little usage that it’s no longer worth developing. Both of those might be warning signs that Copilot revenue growth is not progressing as Microsoft expects. It certainly isn’t bringing in the kinds of cash that will offset the investment. I think what we’re seeing is some belt-tightening around features, in the hope that, eventually, most of us will be building declarative agents and paying to use them in our self-designed MCP environments.
Will that ever be enough revenue to offset the massive investments they’ve made in AI? Time will tell. Right now, these are some early warning signs, but also small enough that I can’t imagine they’ll move the needle one way or the other. I’m not jumping to any conclusions based on them, but I do have my eyes open.
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