--- title: "Microsoft Is Having an Incredibly Embarrassing Problem With Its AI" description: "Despite investing tens of billions of dollars into OpenAI, Microsoft is still, apparently, competing with its business partner." date: "2025-06-26" modified: "2025-06-26" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/microsoft-copilot-ai-embarrassment" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "chatgpt" - "copilot" - "microsoft" - "OpenAI" --- # Microsoft Is Having an Incredibly Embarrassing Problem With Its AI ![Despite investing tens of billions of dollars into OpenAI, Microsoft is still, apparently, competing with its business partner.]() *\Image: Stephen Brashear via Getty / Futurism\* Despite [investing tens of billions of dollars]() into OpenAI, tech giant Microsoft has a problem: it's in direct competition with its business partner, and OpenAI is winning. As [*Bloomberg* reports](), Microsoft salespeople are having trouble wooing both potential and existing customers with the company's Copilot, its AI assistant built on OpenAI's tech. Basically, it feels like a worse version of ChatGPT — which has a free version online. Some companies, like the New York Life Insurance Co, told the magazine that they've purchased both to see which employees prefer. For the drugmaker Amgen, which bought Copilot software for 20,000 of its staffers only for them to ignore it in favor of ChatGPT, the winner is clear. As Amgen senior vice president Sean Bruich told *Bloomberg*, employees at the pharmaceutical company still use Copilot when they're forced to by Microsoft-specific apps like Outlook and Teams. Nevertheless, they seem to prefer ChatGPT for tasks like research and document summarizing because, apparently, it's just better and more enjoyable. "OpenAI has done a tremendous job making their product fun to use," Bruich said. According to *Bloomberg*'s unnamed insider sources, Microsoft itself is partially to blame for falling behind its partner at OpenAI. Because Copilot wasn't launched until [November 2023](), a full year after [ChatGPT dropped](), employees at the companies Microsoft pitches to had already begun experimenting with the OpenAI chatbot for themselves. Even now, OpenAI updates still take weeks to integrate into Copilot. As Microsoft workplace AI czar Jared Spataro told *Bloomberg*, the company insists on testing each out before letting them go live because, as he puts it, "not every change that is being made to the models actually is net positive." As the two tech companies [hash out the shaky future]() of their multi-billion-dollar partnership behind the scenes, employees at longtime Microsoft customer Bain & Company seem to have chosen a side. Representatives from the management firm told *Bloomberg* that it recently deployed ChatGPT to some 16,000 of its employees, many of whom are now using it regularly. Comparatively, only 2,000 Bain & Co employees regularly use Copilot, and even they are mostly utilizing it as an assistant on programs locked into the Microsoft ecosystem, like Excel. At the end of the day, according to Bain & Co chief technology officer Ramesh Razdan, it seems that workers just don't respond to Copilot as well as ChatGPT. "It’s improving," Razdan said of the Microsoft AI assistant, "but I don’t think it’s at the same level." **More on the Microsoft-OpenAI battle:** [OpenAI May Have Screwed Up So Badly That Its Entire Future Is Under Threat]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()