Better Business Bureau Forces Changes to Microsoft 365 Copilot Advertising

The National Advertising Division at the Better Business Bureau has examined the claims that Microsoft makes for its Microsoft 365 Copilot offering. And it has found them lacking.

“As part of its routine marketplace monitoring program, BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division found that Microsoft Corporation supported certain express functionality claims for Microsoft 365 Copilot but recommended that certain productivity claims and certain claims related to Business Chat be modified or discontinued,” the organization explains. “[We] reviewed express and implied claims made by Microsoft on its website for its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI-powered digital assistant product. Launched for its enterprise customers in November 2023, the Copilot name is used across all Microsoft 365 suite applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and Business Chat.”

Here are the findings:

Generating, summarizing, and rewriting content in Office document files. Microsoft claims that Copilot works seamlessly with documents and can “generate content, rewrite documents, generate summaries, or create PowerPoint presentations … with no material limitations on file type, size, length, or the number of files to which a user can refer and link.” The National Advertising Division (NAD) says that the product substantiates Microsoft’s claims. That is, this is not an exaggeration, though there are certain limitations to Copilot, which Microsoft does not disclose, that “do not impact how consumers use Copilot.”

Use across apps and business chat. Microsoft claims that Copilot can make users more efficient and productive by “grounding” the AI in the user’s or employer’s data. It determined that this functionality exists in Word and the other Office apps, but that the claims for Copilot business chat were exaggerated. “Business Chat cannot generate a document in other applications as manual steps are required for Business Chat to produce the same results as Copilot in a specific Microsoft 365 app.” The recommendation? “Microsoft should modify its advertising to clearly and conspicuously disclose any material limitations related to how Business Chat assists users.”

Productivity and return on investment (ROI). Microsoft claims that up to 75 percent of Copilot users claim they are more productive after several weeks of usage. But the NAD determined that the study that Microsoft offers as evidence does not prove these claims, and it recommends that the company “discontinued or modify” them.

Microsoft says that though it “disagree with certain elements of NAD’s conclusions,” it will follow the recommendations and clarify its claims for Microsoft 365 Copilot.