Microsoft is going full steam ahead with the AI hype, even sacrificing the branding of Microsoft 365. At Ignite, Microsoft is showing a new logo that suggests Copilot is the main product, and Office a derivative.
Microsoft surprises at Ignite 2024 with a new logo for Microsoft 365 (or still Office 365 colloquially). The new icon will be that of Copilot, with “M365” added in a black bar as text. The branding is surprising and a bit confusing.
Microsoft marketed Copilot as a true co-pilot for users, coupled with Microsoft 365. The generative AI tool is based on OpenAI’s LLMs and is integrated into Microsoft’s office applications, although the functionality is not free.
From top product to gateway
Microsoft Office remains the standard for productivity software within companies. Word and PowerPoint are almost synonymous with text and presentation files, and anyone creating a competitor for Office had better make sure it is compatible with the .docx, .xls, and .ptp extensions. There is a reason why there continues to be demand for the Office suite separate from the Microsoft 365 subscription. Yet Microsoft now chooses to relegate the powerful brand to a gateway for its AI offerings.
“Microsoft 365 is becoming a gateway to Copilot,” said Rajesh Jha, Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices Group, at Ignite. The move is surprising, since Office 365 was rebranded to Microsoft 365 only about five years ago, with new logo accompanying it.
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Microsoft Copilot has potentially great value in the way people work, but in general it has not yet been widely expressed within the Microsoft 365 suite. We often hear back in practice that people don’t fully understand exactly what they can and can’t do with Copilot.
Moreover, Microsoft itself described AI as a tool that should be integrated into software rather than a standalone product. AI should seamlessly drive functions that people can then use smoothly.
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By turning Microsoft 365 into a signpost to Copilot, Microsoft is ignoring both the reality of Copilot in companies today, and its own vision. Copilot and AI thus do become their own product, rather than an added value within the context of Word, Excel or PowerPoint.
The decision to customize the Microsoft 365 logo thus seems so largely driven by hype and the urge to force Copilot on more people than are eager for it today. This is nothing new for Microsoft, which is all too happy to use its own products as billboards for less popular features, against the wishes of users. Think of the Copilot button in Edge, or advertising for OneDrive in Windows, to name a few examples.