From Pymnts · PYMNTS · · 1m 50s
Microsoft Cedes Chatbot Race
Microsoft drops personal chatbot push, focuses on enterprise AI tools.
In brief
Microsoft drops personal chatbot push, focuses on enterprise AI tools. Microsoft folded consumer Copilot into workplace product after few chose it as personal chatbot, now targeting enterprise with AI features. Originally reported by Pymnts.
Microsoft folds consumer Copilot
Microsoft is walking away from the personal chatbot race it entered two years ago, folding consumer Copilot into a work product.
New Copilot for enterprise
The new Copilot puts full Word, Excel and PowerPoint inside the app and lets employees spin up always-on agents that live in their company’s Microsoft 365 platform.
Fewer than 7% of seats use Copilot
Fewer than 7% of Microsoft’s 450 million commercial seats pay for Copilot today, and the company is now metering agent work by usage.
Enterprise focus over consumer
Microsoft is leaving the personal chatbot market to OpenAI, Google and Meta and putting its AI effort where it already has the customer, the software and the data.
Two markets differ
Winning consumers meant building a new daily habit from scratch against products that already had one. Winning at work means adding AI to software that more than 450 million commercial seats it already has.
Retreat in August
Group Chats, AI-generated podcasts, Copilot Labs and Deep Research went away by Aug. 18, along with Mico, the animated character that fronted the consumer product.
New Copilot features
The new app is organized around Home, Code and Autopilot, with Home combining chat with Cowork, Code letting employees build apps and automations by describing them, and Autopilot letting people set up always-on agents that watch email and Teams channels.
Enterprise budgets drive Copilot
The commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot license costs $30 per user per month, and Microsoft will bill the Cowork, Code and Autopilot portions of the app by usage.
The essence
Microsoft folded consumer Copilot into workplace product after few chose it as personal chatbot, now targeting enterprise with AI features.
