Satya Nadella insists people are using Microsoft’s Copilot AI a lot
4mon 18d ago by lemmy.nz/u/throws_lemy in technology from techcrunch.com
Oh no you should not say slop it hurts feelings.
Clanker-wankers don't have feelings
Hurt shareholders, you mean?
Feelings.
Shareholders have feelings?
People are using AI a lot, or people were already using programs with recently added AI features a lot?
Day 1: We have 1 million Excel users.
Day 2: we added Copilot to Excel, we have 1 million new CoPilot users!
I see you know corporate math well
One of my bosses was screen sharing with me this week and had co-pilot up in Excel. I don't know what he was doing with it. he started fucking around with it while he was screen sharing, just doing something unrelated to what we were talking about. I know he was just trying to bait me into asking what was going on.
fuck that, I don't care, I know you love your AI, I don't give a shit, it's not useful for what I do and I don't want to talk about how it can almost do something kind of right
I love/hate that this is a common experience. Someone did this to me too, although this was sort of a work friend taking the piss.
I have straight up backhandedly implied people senior to me who get paid 5x more than I do are throwing any possible expertise they might have out of the window. To their face. My stance on these slop extruders is well known among my colleagues.
I’ve even told people who used them in front of me, in a gentle but unflinching way, that their willingness to use them uncritically is a red flag for me and that comparing my genuine work to general machine output is something I can’t simply decide not to take as an insult. Including people who are supposed to review my work. As a professional I have to do something that exceeds the first page of Google in specificity. I do the long yards. Why is that suddenly a problem? If our work was this simple why are we getting paid to do it?
Some of these people trust me enough that they’re getting queasy about the whole AI thing after initially giving in. Yeah it’s decent at summarizing mass emails from corporate. Summarizing mass emails from corporate is not our fucking job. At least two people were paid subscribers to OpenAI’s product and no longer pay for chatbots. Proselytizing against the death of critical thinking is not a lost cause.
I have to get the fuck out of corporate.
Isn't Copilot integrated with the Windows taskbar search?
I think the sole reason Copilot is used at all is because they've forced it in applications it has no place in, and requires it remain on by default.
I have never liked having a search box in the taskbar. My taskbar is for pinned programs, open programs, volume, Ethernet/wifi, and a clock. Nothing more.
You can remove copilot from windows 11 completely now...with an outside program.
I love having a search box on my taskbar. I want it to search my PC for installed apps and files and nothing else. I certainly don't want to do a fucking Bing search for "Settings"
It seems like a waste of space on the taskbar, to me
In the Start Menu/Finder/KRunner/wofi I want it to search, but I don't need the text input box visible at all times taking space
yeah, I actually like it now, but that's mostly because they made the start menu so fucked up and full of shit
I've adjusted to just hitting start and typing the first few characters of what I want to open and slapping enter. I'm okay with that process, I actually kind of like it. I don't need to look at what's going on and I don't need to move my hand over to the mouse. The only problem, and this is kind of a big thing, is that yeah it doesn't search just my fucking installed programs, and sometimes it just opens another program that doesn't even match what I typed. so the 60% success rate at best is kind of a big failure
Its so slow as well. It regularly takes a few seconds to appear when I try and use it
When I'm imagining some Win3.11-style UI, like in Star Wars: Rebellion game, I feel that a search box in the taskbar would be fine. The results should come up in a new normal separate window, of course. Not in a poisoned version of star menu.
The issue is not with having a control element in the taskbar. The issue is with those control elements being very hard to use. The response times are bad. The elements are not clearly separated. The results coming up are hard to navigate. It's as if you were badly drugged and trying to find something in a heap of black sheets with luminous text in a dark room.
And also dynamic search on every change of that field is idiotic. They might do auto-completion if it's fast.
It's in fucking notepad
The original Copilot is GitHub Copilot which is a coding assistant and it's very popular and useful for developers. I think most of the paying copilot customers and usage are coming from there.
It only makes sense economically when they have as many people as possible using it and giving feedback.
Where feedback can be concealed, like how your actions after requesting advice correlate with it, or whether you clarify your request and how many times.
Kind of like internet explorer bundled with Office back in the day….
That'd be my guess.
I have never once went out of my way to use Gemini, for example, but having it appear in every other Google search with some lying bullshit to spread is probably driving up their engagement numbers.
I really should stop using Google. But can't use DDG either because they just use Bing and their own AI service as well, and so does Kagi.
If it helps, you can use https://noai.duckduckgo.com/to stop the auto-AI inserts.
Yeah but you can do the same with Google as well (just can't be arsed to change the search settings on my work PC), it's the principle of the thing.
So you can’t be arsed to live up to your own principles?
I can't be arsed to keep up with changing the config of the browser I didn't choose every time the device updates with new admin-defined settings. That's all.
On my personal device I still use Google right now for consistency/because change is hard, but I set the default behavior in Firefox to exclude AI results.
I'd just prefer to use/support a search engine that abstains from AI entirely, regardless of whether or not you can turn it off. I don't want to be a happy customer of companies that still try to weasel that stuff in, because they won't stop at a toggle. They never do.
you can turn off ai and block ai content in ddg settings.
Kagi AI is opt-in. As in, you don’t go out of your way to use it, you won’t.
DDG uses its own basket of search indexes, Bing is now under 10% or so of total index usage in the big 26. Also yeah, noai ddg is awesome.
Kagi has AI features, but I've only ever seen them in the settings. They have never once pushed me to use them. Which is good, as that would be pretty much a dealbreaker.
They renamed "Office 365" to "Microsoft 365 Copilot".
I have it on my work laptop, because unfortunately my company bought into the hype. Every once in a while I ask it how to do a thing, just to see if it will help. So far copilot has been wrong 100% of the time.
I have to give it this much respect: When I logged in to office.com (for work) recently and was confronted with the Copilot chat-box, I asked it how to disable Copilot. It was honest, and told me that it's not possible because this is Microsoft's new product strategy. Then, I asked how I could never see Copilot again.
It (no joke!) told me to install Linux.
Yeah, I fucking hate that. At least the Windows/Magic/Menu button has a conceptual equivalent in every major OS, so it does something Start Menu adjacent, but the Copilot button is a really arrogant overstep, like when you get a TV with a Netflix button on the remote.
And are these people using Microsoft’s Copilot AI a lot in the room with us now, Satya?
No, you wouldn't know them - they go to a different high school. In Canada.
Are these people that only you can see telling you to burn everything down again, Satya?
Yea, sure. They're unwilling "active users" because they accidentally click on some copilot garbage that's been shoved into every inch of Windows. While I see plenty of folks using various AI tools, none of those tools are copilot.
OS takes a screenshot every five seconds. CEO: "Damn, look how much it is being used!" /s
"A lot" is a great, quantifiable metric there, computer man! 👍👍👍📈💯🍾
The article mentions concrete numbers for the different Copilot products.
A Microsoft spokesperson tells TechCrunch that this number has grown to 150 million total.
150 million, what?
Individual users, prompts, prompts per second, accounts, installs, subscriptions bought?
Numbers on their own have no meaning. This is still rubbish trying to cosplay as information. Active copilot users means nothing until explained how the number is calculated.
"Last year, in its annual report, the company said it surpassed 100 million monthly active Copilot users, but that counted both commercial users and consumers. A Microsoft spokesperson tells TechCrunch that this number has grown to 150 million total. Again that includes commercial and consumer users."
Yeah, by accident.
Yeah, MS Teams (not my choice) had a pop-up that said that in order for a meeting to be recorded, I needed to accept that my video and what I say will be used by Microsoft for various purposes including training copilot.
So, that counts as me using copilot, right? /s
edit: A word
Well yeah, you rename a core product to Copilot and suddenly you have tons of users
They have like 7 different, separate, copilots 😆
You mean Word, Excel, and so on...
Didn't they add copilot to notepad, to the file Explorer, to windows I assume as a non removable service (internet explorer anyone?), and to who knows how many more places?
Whatever metrics they claim to have are for sure not inflated. /s
If people are indeed using copilot a lot then great: good for you, please shut up, you don't need me on-board.
Yeah, this smells a lot like Texas Sharpshooting. Figure out what people use, stuff Copilot in there then proudly present the target that you drew after hitting something.
Man this guy looks like a husk of curses.
Fuckin lol. Lotta these old greedy pricks starting to converge, in visage and thought, on - "well, there has to be a first lich, after all, so..."
Whether they like it or not.
Copilot is such trash. Used it with my daughters project on Amerigo Vespucci. Copilot linked me to Christopher Columbus' journeys. Gemini linked me to the actual information and even in Geminis own search results, the Microsoft one was wrong.
I hated using AI but come on. If you are going to destroy the planet micro slop, at least do it well.
I just rebuilt my Win 11 Pro Workstation setup (yes, it is the version for stupidly high core and thread counts), and one of the first things I did was to violently eviscerate anything AI in the system. Right after gleefully ripping out all the telemetry and spyware.
Won't all of that just reinstall itself after the next update?
In my experience, no if properly debloated.
You stopped a bit short on your delete spree I guess.
But then again, I don't know your workflow and needs; so I'm glad it works for you.
You stopped a bit short on your delete spree I guess.
No, that was just the first two steps. Just on the “rip shit out” category, I typically churn through at least three separate tools, usually in this order:
- Win10Privacy
- Win11Debloat
- Winslop
I mean, sure, Windows can take as little as a half hour to “install”. But on a personal rig (which also includes my own workflow software and personal data shoehorned back into place), I take another 24-48 hours to gleefully beat it into submission and install secondary programs that bypass the warts it has acquired over the years.
And as a benchmark, XP needed only about 6-8hrs of extra work to reach the same threshold of data migration, workflow software, and improved usability (I was an NT fanboy, IMO the primary improvement of XP over 2000 was the start menu).
If we add up the AI push, the spyware/telemetry explosion, the recent attempts to force the use of a Microsoft Account as the default login, and the massive bloating and instability of Windows in general, it’s slowly becoming time for even non-technical, everyday users to move to Linux.
(eh, the sardonic joke I read was: ya stopped short of deleting Windows)
Ohh, that would be all the developers at jobs with daily AI use quotas running scheduled scripts to make it look like they are using AI so they don't lose their jobs.
I ask copilot bullshit that I don’t even read sometimes just so it looks like I’m using ai more. Because my employer demands it and will start tracking AI usage for perf evals!
Great system we have going, here.
Create a loop of copilot talking with itself using the copilot CLI 😉
Finger on the monkey's paw curls
Too little delay on the automated back and forth.
Clueless middle management dork sees (imagines) amazing, promotion-grade results - huzzah, obviously I was right all along!
Things get weirder, and worse.
This is slowly becoming very much like USSR.
I once liked saying that with capitalism and computers one can build anything, including what people rejecting capitalism (and sometimes rejecting computers) can.
So-o, yes. Anything. Including that.
This is literally just wasting electricity to justify the existence of massive datacenters full of nvidia videocards.
No, they're not. 90% of the "use" is them forcing it on us.
I just tried using my voice to call my son on the phone, and Co-Pilot answered, explained what it could do for me, and finally made the call. It took at least 5 times longer than usual to just dial a number. I didn't ask for Co-Pilot, I barely can stand the old way, this new one really, really sucks, and again, I didn't ask for this, it forced itself on my life.
Fuck this AI shit, complicating everything just so some CEOs can rationalize their stupid bonuses.
I mean if it auto generates the summary and all by just opening a word documents then yeah it's being "used" but human in the chair is just ignoring that as another bloat
Yeah cause when I instinctively click the Microsoft learn link below the Azure error it takes me to copilot instead of documentation.
Since they renamed Microsoft Office to Copilot, they have millions of Copilot users. It’s almost as popular as Google+ when Google made all Gmail users Google+ users.
No, we just can't delete it.
I edited my registry to disable it.
Because they keep cramming it in all my apps at work and every time I load my email, it tries to open Copilot?
I just uninstalled my outlook because of forced copilot garbage and forcing me to the cloud when I just wanted to open a pdf. I was enraged and now I am done with all microslop garbage. I used to have an annual subscription too.
Already on Linux, was just too lazy to switch everything but this was enough.
Probably GitHub Copilot.
The rest just sucks.
They utterly trashed their OS, a globally ~dominant cash cow, at an astonishing pace. By completely, eagerly (forcibly!) jumping the gun on exciting new tech, maybe the single above-all "thing you never do with anything even like a cash cow of any shape or size".
As in, that is known - viscerally, below the level of words or even thought, as if that knowledge originates from another realm - by anyone who has ever actually been directly responsible for any valuable piece of technology.
The depth of ignorance and really just flat-out juvenile naivety (fueled by naked greed) that produced this is something I'll probably be thinking about for the rest of my life. Truly amazing, just historically, I mean mythically foolish.
This dude has been locked into this outcome for a long time, and it's getting increasingly obvious how disastrous it is.
There are no dances left for him to perform except "it's really not that bad!"
Hey, Satya. You aren't fooling anyone and you don't have the knack of bald-faced lying like Kristi and Donny.
"The source is that I made it the fuck up!"
Seems to count in 2026.
I use the office apps for college and I avoid the AI, its annoying, it pops up and im usually saying " wtf is this" no i need a blank document
Copilot: forces an AI summary at the top of every word document, intercepts every copy and paste, is injected in every search result
Stays: People love this shit, they use it all the time!
Because Slopya has been shoving it down our throats everywhere. Office, Windows, GitHub,...
I used it for my first time this year. For like a week. That was all.
Then you're part of “monthly active Copilot users” - at least for that month
Indeed. Haven't touched it since
I'd believe him more if it was opt in and very clearly let folks know.
Doubt
X
Lol, no
I use it for .net syntax and .net lib references I figure if it's good for anything it's that. I also used it to write a soulless email about communication and accountability I had to send a dev after he just set himself out of office for 4 days and missed his deliverable deadline.
It still hallucinates MSSQL functions, so I wouldn’t assume it will be great at .Net
To be fair, there are a fair amount of Linux users on Lemmy.as for the millions who’ve never heard of Lemmy? I’m not confident they are not. Especially given the crap we have to clean out of my parent’s computer every couple months.
Weren't they just begging us to use their slop machine like a week ago? Now it's being used "a lot"? Sure Jan, lie to pump the stock.
Their stock price dropped 10% last night. Desperation is sinking in.
Well, if you count its uninstall feature, sure.
It's like they need this to be true
Since they renamed M362 to Copilot the usage numbers have been off the chart!
Absolutely NOT in office/email/whatever. But I must say copilot in vscode is very useful, auto-completion and for small tasks, it can generates code not that bad, just need small mod here and there and that's it.
never did, never will ✨
AI executives don't matter
of course they are, slop boy.
That sounds expensive. Is it making money?
Money for old rope-pilot
It's being used at my work a lot, but I'm guessing it's mostly used as a Google replacement or an auto-complete tool. I know very few people that will generate the majority of their code with AI.
They really try and push it at work
Maybe he’s counting every time a user copies and pastes anything in Word.
I'd love to see the numbers for computers with it immediately uninstalled.
3x increase makes sense to me.
GitHub Copilot (the original copilot) is wildly popular amongst professional software developers, and is used more and more as it gets more powerful.
I suspect most of the original paying customer base are developers and they're seeing a 3x usage, primarily amongst them, with a small bump from users of all the other copilots.
Seems they are often ideological capitalists or fascists and get a kick out of shaping the world into their vision.
People with millions of dollars in assets tend to have millions of liabilities to keep paying off too. The more you have the bigger the stakes are if you stop having it.
I use it for specific code syntax for .net but not for the grand scheme stuff. I do wish I had it integrated in visual studio to do some of the really annoying refractors that are in a billion spots but only require a small change. I don't trust it for anything beyond what I would trust the greenest jr dev to do, and just like the jr dev it is going to mess up even the simple things so keep a close eye on it.