The fact of the matter is that if Google and Microsoft can't make generative AI apps with meaningful consumer penetration, this entire industry is screwed. There really are no optimistic ways to look at these numbers (and yes, I'm repeating from the above):
- Microsoft Copilot: 11 million monthly active users on the Copilot app, 15.6 million unique monthly visitors to copilot.microsoft.com.
- Google Gemini: 18 million monthly active users on the Gemini app, 47.3 million unique monthly visitors.
These are utterly pathetic considering Microsoft and Google's scale, especially given the latter's complete dominance over web search and the ability to funnel customers to Gemini. For millions — perhaps billions — Google is the first page they see when they open a web browser. It should be owning this by now.
Actually, I take that back. Some people care about Gemini — not that many, but some! — and it's far more fair to say that nobody cares about Microsoft Copilot despite Microsoft shoving it in every corner of our lives. 11 million monthly active users for its unprofitable, heavily-commoditized Large Language Model app is a joke — as are the 15.6 million monthly active users to its web presence — probably because it does exactly the same shit that every other LLM does.
Microsoft's Copilot app isn't just unpopular, it's irrelevant. For comparison, Microsoft Teams has, according to a post from the end of 2023, over 320 million monthly active users. That’s more than ten times the amount of monthly active users of their Copilot app and the Copilot website combined, and unlike Copilot, Teams actually makes Microsoft money.
Now, I obviously don't have the numbers on the people that accidentally click the Copilot button in Microsoft Office or on Bing.com, but I do know that Microsoft isn't making much money on AI at all. Microsoft reported in its last earnings that it was making "$13 billion of annual revenue" — a projected number based on current contracts — on its "artificial intelligence products."
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal from October 2023, Microsoft was losing on average more than $20 a month per user on the paid version of Github, with some users costing them more than $80 a month. Microsoft said a year later that Github Copilot had 1.8 million paid customers, which is pretty good, except like all generative AI products, it loses money.
I must repeat that Microsoft will have spent over $200 billion in capital expenditures by the end of 2025. In return, it got 1.8 million paying customers for a product that — like everything else I'm talking about — is heavily-commoditized (basically every LLM can generate code, though some are better than others, by which I mean they all introduce security issues into your code, but some produce stuff that’ll actually compile) and loses Microsoft money even when the user pays.
There is also growing backlash lately against multiple aspects of AI. From the deepfake shit, to the blatant theft, backlash against companies using GenAI, etc. It's only going to grow as people get laid off due to AI, which will likely push governments into bipartisan support to regulate AI better, once the rules come in, the hype will be hurt, right now though, AI shit is pretty damn lawless. Companies have been pushing their luck with AI, they aren't naturally introducing it, they aren't carefully allowing customers to adopt it, they're trying to ram it down everyone's throat and blatantly abusing it and it is pissing people off.
