Microsoft's Awkward AI

In a vacuum, the new consumer version of Copilot that Microsoft rolled out yesterday sounds compelling enough. It's framed less as an answer engine or math machine or search replacement and more as a companion service. Sort of an AI friend. It's actually quite similar to what the startup Inflection, which Microsoft hired hackquired, was trying to do with Pi. But that had startup scale. Which is to say, no scale. This has Microsoft scale.

But we don't live in a vacuum and neither does Microsoft. They live in an AI environment that is a cut above cutthroat. This new Copilot isn't walking into a pristine green field of opportunity, it's walking into a minefield of conflicts and interests.

First and foremost, this Copilot's main competitor is ChatGPT. Less specifically, but more because ChatGPT is everyone's main competitor in the space right now. It's the leading chatbot. The jury remains out in terms of how many different types of chatbots people are going to use, but it's ultimately likely to be closer to one than to many. As such, there are too many of them in the market already. With more coming each day. That makes some sense as it's still the wild west days of all this. But it won't be forever. One day, the music will stop, and a lot more hackquisitions will happen. See also: what happened to Inflection's Pi. And Character.ai. And Adept. And so on...