The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch disaster

At the start of the New Year, with no warning, Microsoft gives its flagship productivity app a name change and a huge price increase. Why would the company make this mess? I asked Copilot, who explained it very well.

Ed Bott, ZDnet

Microsoft adds AI to a consumer product, because nobody is buying their AI product, thus raising the price for the consumer product. To add insult to injury, you cannot use AI inside the product if you are logged in with your business and your consumer account, because … that is not working yet.

In Word, you have the option to switch Copilot off. By default, it is on. Excel and Powerpoint do not have the opt-out, because … that is not working yet.

I can see how this is happening. A clear message to product management “add Copilot to your product, or else”. IBM has done the same thing with IBM Watson. Over-promise and under-deliver. It did not end well.

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2 thoughts on “The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch disaster”

  1. Thanks to your information about the discounted Office 365 Family packages on Black Fridays, we now have peace of mind from the price increases and the (unwanted) Copilot with 60 AI credits per month and user for free until April 2028. Although this is not the so-called Copilot Pro, we are unlikely to need more than 60 uses of Clippy 2.0 per month.

    Amazon also offers the Microsoft 365 Family 27-month package for €198. That’s about €7.33 per month

  2. Deepseek won’t make it easier for MS and Co to make money of their LLMs.

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