Every time Microsoft released a major ai feature this year, I couldn't help but feel more skeptical about the company's new direction. Here's Microsoft, a notoriously conservative and slow-moving giant, reshaping its products around artificial intelligence shortly after most people knew generative ai existed. The last time it made such a dramatic change we got Windows 8, a failed attempt to make its flagship operating system compatible with tablets and touchscreens.
Now, the company is bringing ai right to the heart of Windows and I'm wondering: Is Microsoft jumping into artificial intelligence to improve its products? Or are you simply trying to stake your claim as an ai innovator and pray that the technology truly lives up to the hype? At this point, it's really hard to tell.
As Zune, WebTV, and Windows Phone have shown, Microsoft isn't that good at syncing. Their products often arrive too early to be useful (like the slow WebTV) or too late to make an impact (like the genuinely fantastic Zune HD). But when the company introduced its ai-powered Bing Chat earlier this year, it was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the success of ChatGPT, which by then had already technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/”>supposedly reached 100 million users in just two months. According to UBS analysts, that would have made ChatGPT the fastest-growing consumer app in history. What better time to combine the power of generative ai with one of its notoriously beleaguered products? Microsoft had nothing to lose.
After investing a total of $13 billion in OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT (and taking a 49 percent stake in the process), Microsoft was probably eager to show off its shiny new toy in front of Google and others. The introduction of Bing Chat officially kicked off Microsoft's year of ai: Copilot launched on Edge, Microsoft 365 products like Word and Powerpoint and finally came to Windows 11. Even more surprising, the company recently announced that Copilot is coming to Windows 10, a sign that it wants ai features in front of as many people as possible. (Windows 11 reportedly represents 26 percent of Windows installations, while Windows 10 still has 69 percent. By targeting both platforms, Copilot could potentially reach up to 1.4 billion users.)
There's no doubt that Copilot makes a great first impression. Type a few words (or say them out loud) and it will return with direct answers to your questions, like a smart assistant. There are no ads to scroll through and you only have to interact with additional links if you want. It's a glimpse into a world beyond search engines, a world where ai could help guide us through an increasingly chaotic media landscape. Microsoft co-pilots can also help in specific applications: in Edge they can summarize the web page you are viewing; can help transcribe and generate action points in Teams Meetings; and can help discover hard-to-find settings in Windows (for example, you could simply type "How do I activate night mode?" to turn it on).
But Copilot's confident appearance hides the fact that he often makes mistakes and can sometimes completely misinterpret your questions. It's much less responsive than using a typical search engine, since there's a lot of opaque ai processing going on in the background. And in my tests, it also crashes more often than you'd think, requiring a “reboot” of your session (but at least it doesn't show a blue screen like Windows).
In an effort to temper our expectations, Microsoft has a helpful note stamped above Bing's ai chat: "Bing is powered by artificial intelligence, so surprises and errors are possible. Please share your feedback so we can improve!" Microsoft seems to show a bit of humility here by acknowledging that its ai chat isn't perfect and is trying to win some points by saying it's listening to your feedback. However, that warning mainly serves as a cop out for Microsoft. You can tout Copilot's ability to write essays and hold vaguely realistic conversations, but the moment you get it wrong, the company can simply say: "It's just a beta version, hahaha!"
The big test for Microsoft Copilots and other generative ai tools comes down to one thing: trust. Can a user trust you to provide them with the relevant information when they ask a question? Can we be sure that Copilow will understand our query correctly? Aaron Woodman, vice president of Windows marketing at Microsoft, tells us that trust will ultimately come down to users. "kicking the tires" for themselves and see how well Copilot performs. "I think that type of organic growth is one that we will see over time," he said in an interview with Engadget at the launch of Windows Copilot in September. "And I bet it's going to be explosive because the value is there and I think customers will see it very quickly."
Woodman also believes users will understand that Copilot won't always be perfect, especially during these early days. "Interestingly I think we're probably more empathetic towards people and understanding where they are with growth than we are with technology." he said. "I think the best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge it and be transparent about it. On some level, in every conversation we engage in, we try to lean into the fact that this is a growth process. We want to make sure you understand the reference materials. I think people will understand that we are trying to accelerate access to (new) technology."
I've been using Microsoft's ai solutions since Bing Chat launched earlier this year, and while it's useful for simple tasks like creating a specs table comparing two products, it hasn't exactly changed the way I work. . Microsoft also had to severely restrict Bing Chat's capabilities early on after it began arguing with users and issuing disturbing responses. In Windows 11, Copilot can sometimes help me find settings like dark mode, but it can't always open the controls within the Copilot panel and sometimes just sends me to the general settings menus if it can't figure out what I'm doing. doing. I'am asking.
More recently, I had disappointing conversations with Bing when I asked him if it was a good time to buy a Nintendo Switch (it took a bit of prodding for rumors of a possible Switch follow-up to emerge next year), and his ability to answer questions about images is even less useful than Google image search.
When I took a photo of my son's baby monitor and asked “What is this?”, Bing knew its function, but got the actual model and manufacturer wrong. That query also took five seconds to complete. Google image search took half a second and correctly identified it as Eufy Space Monitor. Get one for traditional search (and yes, I know it works with its own set of computer vision models too).
We can look at Microsoft Github Copilot, which launched in November 2021, as a way for users to learn how to work with ai. It is primarily intended to serve as a partner alongside an experienced programmer: it will look for potential problems and can even generate simple code.
According ai-review-github-copilot-d43afde51a5a”>developer Aidan Tilgner, Github Copilot can be really useful for programmers, as long as you keep your expectations in check. On the paper "GitHub Copilot ai Pair Programming: Active or Passive?" Authors Arghavan Moradi Dakhel, Vahid Majdinasab, Amin Nikanjam, Foutse Khomh, Michel C. Desmarais, and Zhen Ming Jiang found Github Copilot to be equally useful, but note "It can also become inconvenient if used by beginners, those who may not be familiar with the context of the problem and correct coding methods."
"Copilot suggests solutions that may be buggy and difficult to understand, which beginners may accept as correct solutions." the authors add. "Adding such complex and buggy code to software projects can greatly impact their quality."
By leaning so heavily on co-pilots in the future, Microsoft may also be becoming too tied to OpenAI, a young company that recently endured one of the most volatile weekends in Silicon Valley history. OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, but after a significant amount of internal pressure (and some cajoling from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella), it eventually rehired him a few days later. If OpenAI goes through another tumultuous event, it's not just Microsoft's $13 billion investment that will be in jeopardy — it will be the company's future plans for virtually all of its products.
According ai-focused-windows-release-as-new-leadership-takes-the-helm”>Windows Center, Microsoft's next major Windows update, “Hudson Valley,” may arrive next year with a host of ai improvements. That includes the ability to analyze content displayed in video chats, an improved Copilot that can remember everything you've done on your PC, and better system-wide search. Some features may also require CPUs with NPUs, such as AMD's latest batch of chips and Intel's new Core Ultra hardware. This is similar to Windows Studio Effects features, such as background blur and auto-framing, which also require NPU.
The only constant around ai these days is that everything is changing rapidly. Since I started writing this article, Microsoft announced that Copilot would be updated with the more powerful GPT-4 Turbo and Dall-E 3 models, making them even more capable. Perhaps Microsoft and OpenAI can eventually fix all the problems I've seen with Copilot so far and ultimately deliver a transformative ai tool that is readily available to everyone. But I also expected the best when it came to the company's dual-screen Duo and Neo plans, and all I got in return was disappointment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-bet-big-on-ai-in-2023-but-its-ai-future-is-still-unclear-143055721.html?src =rss
