Copilot Everywhere: Helpful or Hindrance?

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (free license) users are going to be getting access to Copilot added to their chat list to match the option available to licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot users. According to MC1098161 in the message center, this will start rolling out to general availability next week.

This is arguably a minor change. But it does lead me to think about at what point do we just have too many access points for Copilot?

In many apps (including Teams) we now see three distinct places for accessing Copilot experiences, and some of these are duplicative. If you browse with Edge and use the web apps, then you probably often see four Copilot buttons, and can open up to three largely similar Copilot panes on the same screen.

Add to this the fact that the Copilot Chat interface shown in Teams is slightly different than the one shown in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, or then again in the Edge sidecar, and you suddenly have a confusing mess of Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences where it isn't clear what is available where.

Recently, I saw Jukka Niiranen take on this issue in a post here on LinkedIn. But I think this is an important point of consideration, as if even those who work to become Copilot experts are a bit confused by the different options, how are average users supposed to keep up?

Last week, fellow Copilot MVP Pierre-Yves Delacôte cautioned me that "Copilot is a constant learning journey", and while I largely agree that the pace of change means learning is essential for everyone, it still seems fitting to call out those additions or duplications that make adoption harder.

Imagine someone joining a prospecting company during an 1800s goldrush, and they are told to go retrieve a pickaxe from the wagon. If there's a single pickaxe or a few the same pickaxes laying there, deciding what action to take is easy. But if there's ten largely similar but somewhat different pickaxes lining the floor of that wagon, the decision of which to use unless you have specific expertise is harder. And even if each pickaxe would be similarly effective, for those who are starting out, the options still slow things down.

The same is true for the AI goldrush 200 years later. If we fill our apps with similar Copilot shaped pickaxes and just tell our teams to go dig a hole the options are going to slow things down. Options that lead to roughly similar paths just slow down training and adoption, and, in my opinion, result in less thoughtful inquiry that promotes learning.

Should we all be trying to constantly learn in this new AI age? Yes. But it is for companies like Microsoft to ensure their products are built in a way that makes that time spent learning useful to generating differentiated results.

What do you think? Does there need to be more of a focus on how different options support learning and adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot?