Microsoft abandons personal AI chatbot race with Copilot reboot

Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.HomeInnovationMicrosoft abandons personal AI chatbot race with Copilot rebootThe new Copilot, which will roll out in the coming weeks, brings to a close one of Microsoft’s biggest bets of the AI eraAuthor of the article:Having helped OpenAI bring ChatGPT to the world, Microsoft bet its own consumer assistant could win over a new set of customers. It quickly became an uphill battle. Photo by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesMicrosoft Corp. is merging the consumer and workplace versions of its Copilot AI assistant into one product aimed at corporate customers, ceding the crowded market for personal chatbots to OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and, now, Meta Platforms Inc.THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLYSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESCreate an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountAt an event in Seattle earlier this week, Microsoft executives gave a few dozen business and technology leaders a preview of what they’re calling the new Copilot. The result of a six-month engineering effort, the latest iteration of the assistant has absorbed the separate version for home use, adopting some of its slick design features, and casting aside the marketing that sought to position the company as a builder of personal AI.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.People have high expectations for workplace software, informed by their experience with smartphone apps, Jacob Andreou, who leads product development of the unified Copilot app, told the audience of corporate customers on Wednesday. Importing some user experience features from the consumer app “made Copilot so much better in just the last few months,” he said.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againMicrosoft’s individual users, Andreou added, tend to be people who like to poke around in PowerPoint and Excel, and are more interested in “the full power that we offer to enterprise users” than a simplified chat app.The updated software, announced on Friday, gives users the ability to edit Word or Excel documents within a Copilot app or browser tab, addressing a common gripe that Microsoft’s assistant had only limited reach into the company’s own productivity software. There’s also a tab for a coding assistant to enable regular users to put together dashboards or automate tasks. Microsoft’s Scout, an always-on assistant that coworkers can summon, is joining the Copilot package too, rebranded as Autopilot.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.The new Copilot, which will roll out in the coming weeks, brings to a close one of Microsoft’s biggest bets of the AI era. Two years ago, executives formed separate teams to build two assistants — one for the workplace and one for home. Having helped OpenAI bring ChatGPT to the world, Microsoft bet its own consumer assistant could win over a new set of customers and tapped AI industry veteran Mustafa Suleyman to lead the effort.It quickly became an uphill battle when ChatGPT sprinted to a billion users and Google deployed its Gemini personal assistant to the vast Android ecosystem. Comparatively few people took Microsoft up on its offer of a personal chatbot. Suleyman in March ceded his Copilot product development responsibilities to Andreou, a former Snap Inc. executive.Microsoft’s retreat coincides with the arrival of Meta’s Muse, a personal assistant that can act on users’ behalf and has raced to the top of the app download charts.In interviews this week, Andreou and Charles Lamanna, an executive who oversees Microsoft teams working on some of Copilot’s core workplace features, said Muse’s success proved people were receptive to AI automation. Microsoft’s opportunity, they said, is to bring similar capabilities to office workers.This advertisement has not loaded yet.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.“We’re not going to build a Copilot that’s like your personal companion,” Lamanna said. (In April 2025, Suleyman had laid out Microsoft’s ambitions for Copilot in those very terms, standing in front of an enormous video screen introducing “Your AI Companion.”)“That’s just not what people want from Microsoft,” Lamanna said. “We help you get stuff done.”Andreou said many of the features of the personal Copilot, including specialized tools for health questions, studying or surfacing news and information, were incorporated into the rebuilt product. “In this unified Copilot, you actually still have all of these amazing consumer verticals and all of these kind of bespoke experiences,” he said.Some other features included in the personal Copilot, including custom podcasts and an animated blob of an avatar that popped up during conversations, have been retired. Anthropomorphic touches live on in the new Autopilot bots, which appear as smiling shapes when they are invoked in a Teams chat or email.Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella compared the shift in office work brought about by automated AI services to the personal computer’s displacement of interoffice memos and faxes. “That was not just about our new digital tools,” he said at this week’s event. “It was a complete, new way to conceptualize how that business process trajectory worked. That’s what’s happening around Copilot.”This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Companies were paying for more than 30 million Copilot subscriptions as of the end of June. And while individual users are free to use limited versions of Copilot’s chat experience, its most powerful tools are reserved for subscribers to the company’s M365 apps bundle, which has about 90 million paying users.David McLaren, who leads data and AI work at GHD, a Canadian engineering and professional services firm that is part of a Microsoft program for early adopters of AI tools, said employees were turning to Copilot for summaries of conference calls and help managing email, as well as work putting together pitches and analysis for clients. “It will get you off the white, blank page,” he said.GHD started using Copilot in late 2023 with a 300-person trial, and has since rolled out the tool to all of its 12,000 employees.“I’m amazed by the use cases,” McLaren said. “They’re all over the place.”We apologize, but this video has failed to load.This advertisement has not loaded yet.Notice for the Postmedia NetworkThis website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. 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