Fortunately for Mr. Softee they have other AI irons in the fire.
From ExtremeTech, December 10:
Google's Gemini is on pace to push Copilot into third place
Microsoft has cut its sales targets for its agentic AI software after struggling to find buyers interested in using it. In some cases, targets have been slashed by up to 50%, suggesting Microsoft overestimated the potential of its new AI tools. Indeed, compared with ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, Copilot is falling behind, raising concerns about Microsoft's substantial AI investment.
Microsoft was an early investor in many of the latest AI companies. It ended up with a serious stake in OpenAI and benefited from early access to its models, creating Bing Chat and Copilot when Google, Meta, and Anthropic were just getting started. But now its momentum has stalled, and like everyone else, it's not making much money from its AI products. That's because no one is buying them, and that is because very few people actually find them useful, The Information reports.
"The Information’s story inaccurately combines the concepts of growth and sales quotas," Microsoft said in a very defensive statement (via Futurism), adding that "aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered."
Petulance aside, tests from earlier this year found that AI agents failed to complete tasks up to 70% of the time, making them almost entirely redundant as a workforce replacement tool. At best, they're a way for skilled employees to be more productive and save time on low-level tasks, but those tasks were already being handed off to lower-level employees. Having an AI do it and fail half the time isn't exactly a winning alternative....
