Misleading statements about Copilot and AI? Surely not!
Microsoft is facing AI-related issues on multiple fronts. Disgruntled investors have flung a sueball at the company over its Copilot claims, while it is reportedly turning to other cloud vendors to help with AI-induced scalability issues at its coding collaboration tentacle, GitHub.The sueball is a class action, filed by the City of St. Clair Shores Police and Fire Retirement System in the Seattle US District Court, that alleges that Microsoft bosses (including its CEO, Satya Nadella) made "materially false and/or misleading" statements about adoption of the company's Copilot technology.
On the contrary, according to the complaint, "Microsoft’s flagship proprietary AI model ranked well below competitors on a number of benchmark tests," and "Microsoft had failed to convert a significant percentage of its commercial Microsoft 365 users to paid Copilot subscriptions and the Company's Copilot offerings had lost market share to rival products, a trend that was increasing."
Some organizations are gung-ho for Copilot these days – NHS England, for example, announced plans last week to roll the technology out to more than half a million staff. However the class action alleges Microsoft's SEC filings did not clearly explain problems "regarding the development and customer adoption of Copilot products and Microsoft's proprietary AI models."
