Return on investment for Copilot? Microsoft has work to do (www.theregister.com)

Microsoft’s Modern Work chief Jared Spataro acknowledged at a Goldman Sachs conference that while Copilot shows clear productivity gains in controlled tests—he cited 20–30% efficiency improvements—translating those gains into a clear ROI for knowledge work remains “hard to make.” He reiterated that Copilot has broad enterprise uptake (Microsoft previously said ~70% of the Fortune 500 use it) and is the fastest-growing Microsoft 365 product, but admitted adoption is still early and requires organizational change. Microsoft is trying to justify Copilot’s per-seat pricing (about $30) as customers weigh FOMO-driven deployments against uncertain payback. For the AI/ML community, the statement crystallizes key product and measurement challenges: attribution of value in team-based, knowledge-centric workflows; the need for rigorous A/B/controlled experiments over time; and integrating models into applications (Copilot in Excel cells, Copilot Vision sending data to servers) with attendant privacy and telemetry implications. Microsoft’s push—backed by massive investment and a global reseller channel—highlights that technical capability alone doesn’t guarantee ROI; success depends on deployment design, metrics that capture team-level outcomes, data governance, and change management. Mixed trial results and analyst payback timelines reinforce that enterprise AI adoption is as much a systems and measurement problem as a model problem.