According to the first users to try Microsoft’s big bet on AI, Copilot Pro “invents its own answers” and is “expensive.”

Microsoft wants 2024 to be the year of Copilot. That’s why we saw how the company renamed its mobile browser “Microsoft Edge: AI Browser”, how it revealed it was going to add a Copilot key to computer keyboards, and how more Windows applications integrated with Copilot . And now, Microsoft is building on Copilot’s momentum by introducing Copilot Pro, a paid monthly subscription that unlocks new features.

It’s easy to see why Microsoft is going full force with Copilot Pro. With AI-enabled PCs coming to market, gaining a foothold and making an impact in the market is now more important than ever. However, Microsoft has had a really rough start with its payments service. And if the company doesn’t correct the problems, it could damage CoPilot’s reputation in the long run.

According to this article published in the Wall Street Journal, the first users of Copilot Pro are facing a number of problems that call into question the general strategy of the company founded by Bill Gates. One of the selling points of Copilot Pro is its fast access to chat services, especially GPT-4 Turbo. However, customers are finding that the performance is worse than before they subscribed. People complain that messages take a long time to generate, especially when using the more advanced “creative” mode that GPT-4 Turbo uses. Others report that the answers they get are vague and don’t make much sense.

When users took to X — formerly Twitter — to report their problems, Microsoft responded with some solutions. They did not notice any issues on their end, but advised users to turn off efficiency mode on their browsers to fix it.

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However, the ideal would be for CoPilot to work well even with the efficiency mode activated, not in vain, we are talking about a device that is considered the most advanced ever created by the brand, and, the most Above, keeping in mind that its own browser, Microsoft Edge, uses this technology. People won’t use an AI assistant if it crashes or responds poorly, and it’s not immediately intuitive that the browser’s efficiency mode is to blame.

Professionals having problems with Office integration in Copilot Pro

CoPilot Pro also allows you to implement AI assistants with Microsoft Office applications. However, people are having trouble getting Copilot Pro to work with their apps.

Some people have difficulty deploying Copilot Pro in the office, while others find that Copilot crashes when given commands within an application, especially when asked to process a lot of data. Some people ask Copilot to create images for their documents, only to find that the end result looks unattractive and dull. And some simply get an error message saying “Something went wrong, please try again later” when trying to use Copilot.

Companies that have been able to test this technology have stated in the Wall Street Journal that their employees are struggling to try the tool, at least at first. So far, the shortcomings of programs like Excel and PowerPoint and their tendency to make errors have led some reviewers to wonder whether, at $30 per person, it’s worth the price.

Copilot integration into Office is one of the biggest attractions of the Pro plan. If people have trouble getting CoPilot Pro to work well with their Office documents, it may hurt many people’s perception of the plan and may cause them to cancel it. That’s why Microsoft needs to pay close attention to users’ feedback about Copilot in Office and rework it: No one wants to use an AI assistant that does things worse than they could do themselves. Can.

For example, the Wall Street Journal article talks about a specific case in which evaluators claim the technology has fallen short: CoPilot, for Microsoft 365, is sometimes “illusive”, meaning it has Answers are invented.

Other users said that CoPilot sometimes made mistakes in completing summaries. At an advertising agency, a co-pilot-generated summary of a meeting once said that “Bob” talked about “product strategy.” The problem was that no one named Bob was on the call and no one talked about product strategy, said an executive at one of the companies testing the product.

Copilot Pro has a slightly different price for Office apps

Finally, on forums like Reddit, some users complain about Copilot Pro’s complicated pricing scheme, a system that feels like a minefield. CoPilot Pro costs $20 per month, and if you want integration with Office 365, you’ll have to pay an additional $10, for a total of $30 per month.

However, what if you have an Office 365 family plan? It turns out that CoPilot’s $20 per month only covers one user. If you want to add CoPilot Pro to each member of your family’s account, you’ll have to pay $20 for each individual member, up to $120 per month if you’re using up to six family members on your plan. Will have to pay.

It seems illogical or even confusing that Microsoft hasn’t created a CoPilot Pro subscription that would cover the entire family plan. If Microsoft objects, it should at least offer a “CoPilot Pro Family” plan, which costs just over $20. But not the $120 that families have to pay now. There are many problems for a device that is supposed to be the future of work… and in theory it would render many humans obsolete.

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