Workers with direct access to client feedback say that one of the most common complaints regarding Microsoft’s Copilot is that it doesn’t seem to perform as well as ChatGPT.
“Every time a customer starts using it, they start comparing it to ChatGPT and saying, ‘Aren’t you guys using the same technology?'” Says one of the people.
Customers who are now testing Microsoft Copilot technologies for the first time have somewhat high expectations after interacting with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot. The software giant’s attempts to live up to those expectations will be a crucial litmus test as the AI sector tries to move consumers away from free consumer chatbot products and toward more valuable options.
Before consumers begin to question whether they are receiving a fair return on the additional money they are spending on this much-hyped technology, Microsoft is working quickly to improve these AI products.
Copilot vs. ChatGPT
Since the business made Copilot for Microsoft 365 broadly available in November, it has served the greatest number of users to date. This particular AI assistant is compatible with the business suite of Word, Outlook, Teams, and other products from the corporation.
The Microsoft employees who talked with BI said that so far, feedback on the product has been mixed to leaning positive.
There are the typical issues with Microsoft: Some consumers anticipate whizbang AI Copilot features to function with somewhat antiquated software, such as Outlook email service, which they use in previous versions.
However, Microsoft staff members informed BI that ChatGPT comparisons were persistent. These sources requested anonymity when addressing personal issues.
The “work” version of the Copilot tool helps employees working on things like meeting summaries by using internal customer data to help provide automatic support.
It requests this private data from several sources, such as Microsoft’s SharePoint teamwork platform. This can occasionally result in less detailed or rapid responses than those provided by a free, public web chatbot like ChatGPT, which has been trained using data from the entire internet.
Microsoft representatives explained to BI that users who were complaining that ChatGPT was a better option than this Copilot tool were just misinformed about how the two products differed in operation.
In an interview set up by the corporation, Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, reaffirmed this.
The Azure OpenAI concept is the foundation upon which Microsoft’s Copilot products are constructed. This extends the capability of OpenAI’s best GPT models.
These GPT models offer a comprehensive body of information. In essence, copilots sit above this and use confidential client information to offer customized support in particular job scenarios. Naturally, other limitations are in place, according to Microsoft staff. For example, after every query, it only retrieves internal data momentarily before erasing it.
Teaching customers how to prompt
The staff claim that one major issue facing Microsoft is that customers are generally not very good at writing prompts. These are certain guidelines that maximize the performance of chatbots and AI models. Prompt engineering is a new profession that has emerged in response to this growing capability.
One Microsoft employee told BI, “It’s a copilot, not an autopilot; you have to work with it.”
An AI tool can only provide a response that is as excellent as the question it is asked. “If you don’t ask the right question, it will still do its best to give you the right answer, and it can assume things,” said the individual.
According to one employee, Microsoft has enlisted the expertise of BrainStorm, a partner, to produce training videos that will assist users in crafting more effective Copilot suggestions. BrainStorm and Microsoft declined to respond.
In order to help staff members learn how to use these AI tools to their fullest potential, several Microsoft clients have even established their own internal teams.
According to Spataro, Microsoft has worked hard to provide rapid engineering help, including FAQs and prompt demonstrations, within the Copilot for Microsoft 365 product itself.
‘Work’ Copilot vs. ‘web’ Copilot
The fact that Copilot for Microsoft 365 has both a “web” and a “work” version is a cause of confusion for users.
The web-based version functions similarly to ChatGPT and produces outputs that are comparable. In the meantime, the “work” version is the one that provides more customized and targeted solutions by using internal confidential customer data.
For example, a Microsoft customer can search publicly available client information using the Copilot web version. After that, they might go to the work version to see what other details are available from internal business data on this client.
However, staff members informed BI that clients were becoming perplexed as to why the “work” version was not providing answers as fast or comprehensively as the web-based Copilot.
According to Spataro, Microsoft has been taking steps to make it easier for users to comprehend how these various Copilot solutions work. The firm, for example, is creating a toggle switch that will allow users to switch between the “web” and the “work” versions of Copilot. This will enable users to better understand which dataset is being searched, whether it is the web or their internal files saved in SharePoint.
“Copilot for Microsoft 365 is unlike any other AI experience at work, with a deep understanding of your job and organization that combines top of the line AI models, the web, and your business data to enable new scenarios that directly impact the bottom line in a way that wasn’t possible before generative AI,” Spataro said in a press release.