In January 2024, Microsoft embarked on a transformative journey, stepping into the competitive arena of artificial intelligence with its Copilot assistant, built on advanced large language model (LLM) technology. Since then, the tech giant has rolled out a suite of offerings, including Copilot Pro subscription plans, specialized Copilot+ devices equipped with neural processing units, and even a dedicated Copilot key on keyboards. This ambitious integration has seen the AI assistant embedded across various applications, from the Office suite to the Edge browser.
Microsoft Copilot attracts “only” 20 million users a week, and it’s not going up
However, the reception has not been as enthusiastic as Microsoft had anticipated. Recent findings from Newcomer reveal that despite substantial investments—amounting to billions of dollars—Copilot’s user engagement has stagnated. At a recent executive meeting, Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer, Amy Hood, presented a rather disheartening slide that depicted the weekly user count for Copilot as a flat line, hovering around 20 million. In stark contrast, ChatGPT’s user base has surged to an impressive 400 million weekly users, showcasing a stark disparity in adoption rates.
At Microsoft’s annual executive huddle last month, the company’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users.
On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT’s growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users. OpenAI’s iconic chatbot was soaring, while Microsoft’s best hope for a mass-adoption AI tool was idling.
It was a sobering chart for Microsoft’s consumer AI team and the man who’s been leading it for the past year, Mustafa Suleyman.
This statistic reveals that Copilot’s user base represents merely 5% of ChatGPT’s audience, raising concerns within Microsoft, especially considering there are approximately 1.5 billion Windows users globally. This translates to just over 1% of Windows users engaging with Copilot, despite it being a default application on the platform. Such figures are alarming for a company that has heavily invested in AI technology, as the potential for a significant return on investment seems increasingly bleak.
The challenges facing Copilot are not entirely unexpected. Microsoft’s CEO had previously suggested that Copilot could become “the next Start button,” yet the company has since had to adjust its strategy, allowing users to customize the Copilot key for other functions, including restoring its original Menu key feature. Furthermore, Intel has recently acknowledged that its AI hardware is not gaining traction in the market. This situation underscores the precarious gamble that companies have made, banking on a widespread desire for AI to dominate personal computing, a bet that now appears to be faltering.
