Microsoft's Many Aborted AI Takeoffs with Copilot
Can Microsoft win by selling pick-your-own model and data sovereignty in an AI Austerity Era?
Satya Nadella was going to make Google dance.
It was February of 2023 and Microsoft's CEO was feeling confident that the overhaul of Bing, now powered by OpenAI's models, was going to change the search game. To be fair, it sort of did. But only in so far as it was one of a number of things that perhaps kicked Google into gear to eventually disrupt themselves with their own overhaul of Search, powered by their Gemini models.
Of course, the far larger kick in the ass came from ChatGPT itself and not Bing's variant. Microsoft's version became more famous for suggesting that reporters leave their spouses and getting quickly reined in. Soon afterwards, ChatGPT would go on to reign supreme in AI and Microsoft was back to the drawing board...