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Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

wsj.com

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Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#31

Post by basch »

JohnMakin wrote: post #12

Microsoft's fumble here is pretty spectacular. Back in early 2023, the state of google search was abysmal (despite that their leaders insisted it wasn't, it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion). Microsoft rolled out a new version of bing, which became bing chat - search worked for me again for a very brief window of time. They could have pounced on this opportunity to…

>it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion

if ironic is the right word; the (google) search product itself still is. if not even worse.

the 'new' ai mode routinely creates these silly categories that are not what i was looking for and my screen is filled with repetitive ai summaries of articles. it will ingest a source as fact, and then use that fact to create confirmation bias across other articles. it will even use words like "confirm" when it finds a source saying something, even if the source is junk or seo spam. it becomes somewhat impossible to escape the assumptions the model has made, and i have to resort to traditional web search to get diversity in my results.

and while deep research works, its so overly verbose, with no easy way to tone down the wordiness.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#32

Post by estimator7292 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #11
ryandvm wrote: post #6

Don't worry, after a decade or two of having Windows reinstall and re-enable it every couple weeks against their users' wishes I'm sure they'll get the market penetration they're looking for...

This is repeated endlessly by non-Windows fans I assume, because I disabled AI and other annoyances in Windows long ago and they haven't come back. I even used to worry about updating Windows because I saw this warning so many times, but then I did and it just never came to pass.

Microsoft has a long and well documented history of resetting user preferences.

Multiple times I've disabled the cortana taskbar search widget, only to have a windows update turn it back on and proudly gives me a popup telling me they noticed it was disabled and turned it back on for me.

Microsoft will forcibly re-enable AI features eventually. Again, this is an established pattern for them.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#33

Post by _fat_santa »

The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use.

Most of the announcements I hear about Copilot, it's always how they've integrated it into some other piece of software or cut a deal with yet another vendor to add it to that vendors product offering. On the surface there's nothing wrong with doing that but that just seems to be the ONLY thing Microsoft is focused on.

Worse yet, most of these integrations seem like a exercise in ticking boxes rather than actually thinking through how integrating Copilot into a product will actually improve user experience. A great example was someone mentioned that Copilot was now integrated into the terminal app but beyond an icon + a chat window, there is zero integration.

Overall, MS just reeks of an organization that is cares more about numbers on a dashboard and pretty reports than they are on what users are actually experiencing.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#34

Post by llama052 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #33

The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use. Most of the announcements I hear about Copilot, it's always how they've integrated it into some other piece of software or cut a deal with yet another vendor to add it to that vendors product offering. On the surface there's nothing wrong with…

It feels like that's the entire MO of the Azure platform as well. Make a minimum viable product and then get adoption by selling at all costs, despite the products edges.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#35

Post by JohnMakin »

basch wrote: post #31
JohnMakin wrote: post #12

Microsoft's fumble here is pretty spectacular. Back in early 2023, the state of google search was abysmal (despite that their leaders insisted it wasn't, it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion). Microsoft rolled out a new version of bing, which became bing chat - search worked for me again for a very brief window of time. They could have pounced on this opportunity to…

>it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion if ironic is the right word; the (google) search product itself still is. if not even worse. the 'new' ai mode routinely creates these silly categories that are not what i was looking for and my screen is filled with repetitive ai summaries of articles. it will ingest a source as fact, and then use that fact to create confirmatio…

I don't use it often, but at least now I can get an answer. I swear in early 2023 I would just get completely irrelevant, borderline spammy results to the point I gave up and felt helpless because there was no real alternative at that time for how I used google. It felt like the internet broke for a window of time and Bing (very briefly) brought me out of that hell. To this day I still can't believe they didnt capitalize on it.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#36

Post by pjmlp »

exceptione wrote: post #29
pjmlp wrote: post #25

It is remarkable how during the last 25 years (approximately), Microsoft has been improving their ability to deliver first (or be among the first), followed by messing up the whole process so that late comers end up taking the crown jewels. PDAs, mobile phones, tablets, tablets with detachable keyboards, managed OS userspace, HoloLens, the XBox mess, and now AI. There certainly other examples that I failed to address…

And their philosophy of mediocre = good enough. (Not everything ofc, MS is a continent. .net core, language design etc is top-notch.)

Which certainly has to do with it being initially developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and not plain Microsoft.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40472977

https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd...

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#37

Post by basch »

_fat_santa wrote: post #33

The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use. Most of the announcements I hear about Copilot, it's always how they've integrated it into some other piece of software or cut a deal with yet another vendor to add it to that vendors product offering. On the surface there's nothing wrong with…

The products they are delivering remain somewhat poorly promoted.

Designer is more than an LLM grafted to a text field. https://designer.microsoft.com/

If you go to microsoft.com, which link at the top would you click to get to Designer?

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#38

Post by brg »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
exceptione wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their philosophy of mediocre = good enough. (Not everything ofc, MS is a continent. .net core, language design etc is top-notch.)

Which certainly has to do with it being initially developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and not plain Microsoft. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40472977 https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd...

I would argue that the success has more to do with DevDiv being the strongest technical organization at MS than its provenance.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#39

Post by wolvoleo »

PaulHoule wrote: post #30
jetbalsa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one did they switch to?

Here's a case of a recent one which is early in the cycle https://www.pcmag.com/news/german-province-ditches-microsoft...

LibreOffice isn't bad at all.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#40

Post by AJRF »

They really dropped the ball on this - they are down ~12% for the year.

When they first started, they seemed to be firing on all cylinders and looked like they were going to be big winners, but the strategy has just been a slow motion car crash.

I wonder if Satya is the right person for Microsoft.

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