Comment by nosianu
4 days ago
The reason I have ignored all attempts from MS to get me to click on something Copilot related, or not click it away, is that I have no idea why I should click. I don't know what it will actually do for me.
I'm using AI for some coding here and there, and I'm using it replacing certain kinds of questions I would previously have googled. So I'm certainly not against using AI at all. (We have a ChatGPT subscription.)
But, as a MS 365 Global Admin for a small business (ca. 50 people), I know what most of the many part of the MS eco system do. I use at least a dozen of their various service sites and tools throughout the week. I know what Entra is and does, Exchange (Admin), Teams, Defender (security website, not the installed tool), I'm not even going to mention the well-known Office apps, Azure, SharePoint, etc.
But when they try to get me to use Copilot, I never know what it is supposed to do for me? It just says "Copilot", and? Yes I could read and check and test what it is about. Maybe I will, some day. For now, every one of the services that I as Unix person had to discover for myself over the last year I had a clear goal before I went there, and I knew why I wanted to use a particular service. That's not true for Copilot, and my general AI background knowledge even as at least daily casual AI user I have no idea what to expect. I'm just not motivated to go there and do all the work of motivating myself myself.
For me, the problem is they market "Copilot" and not a function I want. That is too broad and too vague. If they just used it as part of the regular workflows, like Google did when they introduced AI answers, I would already be using it.
Instead of relying on users desire to use specific functionality, they seem to think users want "AI", what for exactly is secondary. But I want functions first, and don't care how they implement it, as long as it works.
PS: Oh and of course I'm afraid that if I start using any Copilot related stuff I may accidentally add something to our company's monthly bill. Which I only do when I actually need something, e.g. a new Office 365 Business Standard license. I don't want to pay for something I don't feel any need for, since the existing tools are already far more than enough.
This feels like a self-sabotage by Microsoft. There are things that Copilot does well - a business-context-sensitive LLM that works between Outlook, Teams, Word, and Excel is legitimately bigger than any coding tool for most of the business world. However, once Microsoft leadership made it clear that Copilot their top priority, the rest of the company got busy rebranding whatever the hell they were already doing as "Copilot". Instead of selling a tool that fits a need, (employees at) Microsoft are selling a label that checks off a quarterly metric.
Added:
I just checked and it's Microsoft 365 Copilot: 28,10 € per user and month.
That is way, WAYYY too much. The MS 365 Business Standard licenses we usually buy are only 11,70 € per user and month, and they are for what we actually need (Email, Office, OneDrive, basic identity).
They want me to pay almost two and a half times as much again for optional add-on functionality at best???
Whatever Copilot offers, even if it's something super-great, in the end it is optional and not the core of what we want from Microsoft.