From the Editor’s Desk: Microsoft, Consumers, and AI, a Comedy (Premium)

After the iPhone was released and took the world by storm, I met with the Windows Mobile team in Silicon Valley. Everyone in this meeting was carrying a Palm Treo Pro running Windows Mobile, which by then was a few years old but still the best device using their platform at the time. And they were eager to explain to me their plan for defeating Apple's latest hit product.

I will never forget this meeting. Someone from the team is pontificating, downplaying the threat. I'm typing on my laptop, taking notes. And then they said this.

"The iPhone proves what we've said all along, that consumers would embrace a friendly, touch-centric device."

I stopped typing, with my fingers hovering above the laptop's keyboard. I missed what they said next, but they kept going. I had stopped listening. Finally, I put my hands down, looked up at the person speaking, and interrupted them.

"Do you even listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth?" I asked.

History shows that I was correct to doubt the veracity of this statement. Microsoft's response to the iPhone was belated, and it didn't arrive until 2009 with Windows Mobile 6.5, a "lipstick on a pig" release that pasted an iPhone-like touch-centric home screen on top of the old stylus-based Windows Mobile interfaces that still dominated the platform. But it didn't end Microsoft's licensing relationship with its slow-moving hardware partners, nor did it result in a first-party app store. In short, it didn't move the needle at all, and Windows Mobile 6.5 arrived two years after the iPhone. It wasn't until 2010 and Windows Phone 7 that Microsoft finally made a reasonable push, and we all know how that turned out: Being so late to market isn't the only reason that failed, but it was one reason.

What's that phrase about not learning the lessons of history?

Flash forward 15+ years, and Microsoft is at it again, pontificating to an audience that either doesn't exist or simply isn't there. Microsoft, the company that has failed at AI and repeatedly failed with consumers, is now telling us what it is that consumers expect from AI. Oh, the hubris.

I can tell you what consumers don't want from AI. Microsoft. Or Copilot.

To be fair to Microsoft, it didn't come up with this information on its own. One imagines it used the Deep Research feature in Copilot, and it came up short again. OK, I'll try to stop. What it did do was commission a study from Edelman Data & Intelligence, which I feel obligated to point out is owned by one of its PR firms. And then use that information as the basis for ... whatever the heck this is.

"AI offers a new way forward: our research finds that it counteracts decision fatigue by lightening the mental burden of weighing one’s options," Windows general manager Nicci Trovinger writes. "After using AI when making a decision, 84 percent percent of people report experiencing positive emotion."

OK, I can't stop.

Our research? I mean, Microsoft did pay...