Microsoft’s Nadella Pressures Deputies to Accelerate Copilot Improvements

Since delegating some of his duties in September, Microsoft’s CEO has become the company’s most influential product manager, with a special focus on making its Copilot AI assistant more essential for customers.

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A few weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to engineering leaders at the company who were working on a consumer version of Copilot, the AI-powered assistant inside several Microsoft products. A Microsoft manager on the email thread noted that Google’s Gemini chatbot had recently gotten better at connecting with Google Drive for tasks like summarizing the contents of photos stored in folders.

Nadella, meanwhile, wasn’t pleased with how Microsoft’s version of that technology was performing. He noted that Microsoft programs for connecting Copilot with Gmail and Outlook “for [the] most part don’t really work” and are “not smart,” according to the email reviewed by The Information.