alt Hacker NewsI think MSFT really needs some validated user stories. How many users want to, "Improve my writing," "Create an image," "Understand what is changed" (e.g. recent edits), or "Visualize my data."?
Those are the four use cases featured by the Microsoft 365 Copilot App (https://m365.cloud.microsoft/).
Conversely, I bet there are a lot of people who want AI to improve things they are already doing repeatedly. For example, I click the same button in Epic every day because Epic can't remove a tab. Maybe Copilot could learn that I do this and just...do it for me? Like, Copilot could watch my daily habits and offer automation for recurring things.
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But do you (or MSFT) trust it to do that correctly, consistently, and handle failure modes (what happens when the meaning of that button/screen changes)?
I agree, an assistant would be fantastic in my life, but LLMs aren't AGI. They can not reason about my intentions, don't ask clarifing questions (bring back ELIZA), and handle state in an interesting way (are there designs out there that automatically prune/compress context?).
>improve things they are already doing repeatedly. For example, I click the same button in Epic every day because Epic can't remove a tab. Maybe Copilot could learn that I do this and just...do it for me?
You could solve that issue (and probably lot's of similar issues) with something like Auto Hotkey. Seems like extreme overkill to have an autonomous agent watch everything you do, so it might possibly click a button.
I can’t find any use case for Copilot at all, and I frequently “sell” people Microsoft 365. (I don’t earn a commission; I just help them sign up for it.) I cannot come up with a reason anyone needs Copilot.
Meanwhile I spent 3-4 hours working with a client yesterday using Dreamhost’s free AI tools to get them up and running with a website quickly whilst I configured Microsoft 365, Cloudflare, email and so forth for them.
> Like, Copilot could watch my daily habits and offer automation for recurring things.
We're working on it at https://github.com/openadaptai/openadapt.
> Copilot could watch my daily habits and offer automation for recurring things
Pretty sure the advertising department already watches you and helpfully suggests things that you need to buy.
I think what people want in the long term is truly malleable software: https://manuel.kiessling.net/2025/11/04/what-if-software-shi...