Microsoft Combining Commercial and Consumer AI Efforts

In a message on the company blog Tuesday (March 17), CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft would merge the commercial and consumer parts of its Copilot system into one effort.

“This will span four connected pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models,” he wrote. “This is how we move from a collection of great products to a truly integrated system, one that is simpler and more powerful for customers.”

Jacob Andreou, a former Snap executive who leads product and growth for Microsoft AI, will become executive vice president of Copilot, overseeing its design, product, growth and engineering

Nadella said the new system will let Microsoft provide more “coherent and competitive” experiences that can evolve in tandem with AI models. He added that the company’s AI models will be increasingly important to its success in the next decade.

The changes were first reported by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, which noted that the shift is happening as Microsoft is working to boost new users for commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot while increasing adoption of the consumer version, accessed through the company’s app and its Edge web browser.

The company has faced obstacles on both fronts, the report added. Microsoft said last month that it had sold 15 million Microsoft 365 Copilot “seats,” compared to Microsoft 365’s base of 450 million-plus paid seats. And while Microsoft has more than 150 million monthly active Copilot users on its first-party platforms, Google’s Gemini has upwards of 650 million monthly users, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT has around 900 million weekly active users.

An earlier WSJ report on Tuesday said that OpenAI was also embarked on its own change in strategy. In this case, that means setting aside what CEO of Applications Fidji Simo called “side quests” to focus on the company’s business and coding users.

In other AI news, PYMNTS spoke Tuesday with Zac Cohen, chief product officer at Trulioo, about the surge of AI-powered attacks on identity systems. Attackers have begun employing automated bots and AI agents that can adapt in real time to seek out weaknesses in voice systems, login flows and behavioral checks.

“The biggest piece is the expanded scope and scale,” Cohen told PYMNTS. “We’re seeing a lot of automated bots and agents that are infiltrating a wider range of identity processes, whether that’s voice spoofing or otherwise.”

Asked whether fake faces, phony voices or artificial “normal” behavior present the biggest threat, Cohen didn’t hesitate. “It’s funny, I don’t really worry about one more than the other,” he said. “What I worry about is really the ability to use them in concert together.”