Microsoft Suleyman Explains How Company Tracks Adoption of Copilot Assistant

Microsoft AI head, Mustafa Suleyman, recently spoke at the company’s 50th anniversary celebration about how Microsoft tracks the progress of its AI assistant, Copilot. He explained that his team measures things like daily and weekly users, how widely Copilot is being used, and how much people are engaging with it. However, Suleyman’s main focus is on something different. He said, “I really, really focus the team on SSR, the rate of successful sessions.”

In the past, when customers didn’t give real-time feedback, companies measured success by how much time people spent using products, like on social media, or how many problems the product solved. “Now, we actually get to learn from the anonymized logs and extract the sentiment,” said Suleyman. 

Suleyman explained that Microsoft is now using an AI model to help determine the sentiment behind users' interactions with Copilot. This facilitates the measurement of SSR.

"Over the last four months, it's gone up dramatically, and that's what we optimize for," he said. He did not, however, provide exact numbers or other specific metrics for Copilot’s performance.

New Features for Copilot

Last fall, Microsoft gave Copilot a new, friendlier voice and added a feature that analyzes web pages for users. The company recently unveiled new features for Copilot, such as personalized podcasts, a tool for researching difficult questions, and the ability for Copilot to be tailored to each individual and conversation.

When asked what Copilot should look like, Suleyman said, "I would definitely go for something that was cutesy," adding, "like a little Furby-type thing."