(This column originally appeared in Forbes)
Microsoft is having a big Copilot problem.
PCWorld reported last month that the company’s flagship AI Assistant holds only 1.1% of the web AI market share, a decline from 1.5% over the past year, with smaller AI tools like Grok, Claude, and Perplexity each commanding larger market shares than Microsoft’s offering.
According to another technology news report, Microsoft has cut its sales targets for its agentic AI software after struggling to find buyers interested in using it. “In some cases,” the report says. “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.”
It’s not hard to find users voicing the same concerns.
“It fails miserably at some of the simplest tasks,” one wrote on X.
“They should’ve called it Clippy,” joked another. “Would’ve hit 100% adoption rate.”
The Copilot Kool Aid
I’m sure, Microsoft being Microsoft, that the more than 400 million users of Office — sorry — the newly renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot App — will have no other choice than to learn to like it. And, Microsoft being Microsoft, Copilot will be embedded everywhere, giving users fewer options to move away. Over time, it’s bound to get better and more widely accepted.
But what about now? In my opinion, there’s a killer way to make Copilot the best AI Assistant of the bunch. How? Allow it to actually fix Windows.
Windows is why Microsoft exists. The operating system is on more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide. Despite competition it remains the leading platform for running laptops and desktops. And yet Windows users -and the IT teams that support it — have had the same problem with the operating system since 1985, the year it was first launched. The problem is fixing Windows.
As I write this, I find that I’m needing the same information from Windows that I’ve always needed. How much disk drive space is available? What is my memory usage? What startup applications are using up the most resources? What does the “Dev Query Background Discovery Broker” service, actually do? Can I stop it? Please stop it.
My Windows devices are in constant need of tweaking. Sometimes it’s as simple as raising the volume on my speakers. Or brightening my screen. But other times I want to clear space. Or delete an application. Or re-organize files. On many occasions I need to check and then fix problems like a microphone that stopped working, an error message I keep receiving or a WIFI connection that periodically goes spotty. Every Windows user is familiar with these issues.
Copilot And Windows
The problem is that Copilot doesn’t fix them. Microsoft provides searching. It provides “help” menus. There are tools included in the operating system and other tools I can download from the Microsoft store. But why? Why do my employees and my IT staff have to do this when we have Copilot? Why do they have to call up “MSConfig” to check on services or a pre-Clinton-era DOS window to run some obscure app in order to diagnose or fix a problem?
Updating Copilot so that it can launch agents on command to actually do things in Windows as if an IT specialist was there would set their AI Assistant apart from all others. Sure, it’s great for it to enhance emails, design presentations, review documents, create policies and do all the other GenAI stuff that its competitors do. But having Copilot be my Windows IT support would have a much more significant impact on my business.
Saving Copilot
Imagine the experience if a user could prompt “add this to my toolbar” or “make this application disappear from my desktop” or “find the latest printer driver for my device and install it” or “rename this device” or “enable Bluetooth and connect this device whenever it’s near.” These are common needs of all Windows users. My people are wasting time hunting answers and fixing them.
When IT gets involved, the costs go up. I see them grappling with Windows issues like “check for malware and suspend suspicious applications,” “rollback the last Windows update,” “search for and recover this file,” “install this printer” and — the most common one — “reset this user’s password.”
Copilot should just do this.
Microsoft markets Copilot for Windows as its “built-in AI assistant in Windows 11.” But it’s not. Sure, it can chat with users, give step by step instructions and offer help with Windows settings. But this is not what we need. We need Copilot to actually do stuff. Where are all those agents? Where’s the intelligence in AI? For now it’s nothing more than a glorified search engine, providing answers to questions that Google searches have been providing for years. I am not saving time or money using it. Hence, its declining popularity.
Maybe I’m over-simplifying. Maybe this is too big an ask. I’m sure I’m not taking into account all the complexities, all the challenges, all the problems. But…c’mon. This is what Microsoft should be doing to differentiate Copilot from its competitors. Build in that capability, along with all else that it does, and I’m happily on board. As will millions of other users.
