Who thought this made sense?
The “AI at Work Roadmap”
The Roadmap still lists a vast number of product updates that have nothing to do with AI. It’s inaccurate, which makes it confusing if you’re looking for updates on non-AI features. Then again, maybe it also proves that, to Microsoft, there are no non-AI features in the company any longer.
I want to be charitable and say that this doesn’t reek slightly of desperation, but is instead a strategic decision, possibly to be followed by a price increase next year. Or even that they are trying to lessen the confusion around the different versions of Copilot.
Then I counted the number of “Try Copilot Chat Now!” buttons on that page and immediately realized how desperate they are to get people to use Copilot.
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.
The surprising part is that someone put the word in a memo. They wrote it down. (Or maybe Copilot wrote it and they didn’t catch it?)
What’s not surprising is that this is the market strategy for an AI tool. Microsoft has a ton of money invested in AI. In many ways, they bet the company on the success of AI generally, and Copilot in particular, and the market just hasn’t developed the way they expected. So, what’s the next step?
The slop problem is the kind of PR problem that kills industries. It’s the Ford Pinto’s exploding gas tank, New Coke, and the iTunes U2 album fiasco all rolled into one. People see all the hype about AI, then experience entire websites and tens of thousands of social media accounts spewing content no one wants, generated by AI.
That’s a perception problem that won’t go away because you want customers to stop talking about it. You have to build a tool that doesn’t create this problem.
The first paragraph makes it obvious that you can’t be an unnamed guest in a Zoom meeting and invite your AI to take notes. That makes sense.
The second adds a requirement: you must also attend the meeting. No more sending your AI to take notes for you while you spend your time elsewhere.
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