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Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work
- JohnFen 1y agoMicrosoft's desperation is getting embarrassing.
- therein 1y agoThis is pretty unacceptable in so many ways. Facebook should do bring your Meta glasses to work day for all the companies that are not as hip as they are. Some companies might have IT departments that blocked X. Elon should buy xatwork.com or better yet use twimg.com to serve X but only at your workplace. PirateBay is probably blocked at many workplaces. That's pretty backwards thinking. I think PirateBay should focus on creating more alternative frontends to bring back torrenting at work. CloudFlare should smuggle in WARP so that you can tunnel out of your workplace. Could put some cloud policies in place for IT departments to maintain control if they want.
- monkeydreams 1y agoThis should be a strike against MS's trustworthiness, if true. A lot of workplaces are hesitant to utilise AI models due to privacy or sensitivity concerns.
- zrobotics 1y agoFTA: "Government tenants (GCC/DoD) for some reason don't support this capability, the one that Baroudi insists "does not create new data exposure risks." So the government customers that can really strike back at MS don't get this enabled by default. Very interesting... I would also wonder if this would trigger IT review due to data access patterns. Having copilot start accessing documents would likely trigger certain security systems at many companies that are designed to prevent corporate espionage. It seems like a good possibility anyway, I certainly wouldn't be willing to risk it just so I could generate AI slop emails.
- netsharc 1y agoHow do they even prevent leaks? Trying to paste something and getting a "Your organization's policy disallows this" would be amazing. Next they should block me when I try to type the content manually into the Glorified Auto-Correct..
- phatskat 1y agoI actually ran into this recently. Someone linked a doc in iirc a teams chat. Ok, I have teams on my phone. Click the link and get a basic file view, controls are wonky so I’ll download it and… > You need Edge to download this file Oh no thanks, not on my phone. I can screenshot the relevant part? > Screenshot is a black rectangle Ok well I can copy and pa- fuck! > Clipboard contains “your organization’s security policy prohibits copying on this device” — Also, my org’s policies apparently prevent me from using the official GitHub app, but I can browse the repo on edge? Make it stop.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jiggawatts 1y agoThe KPIs of some random Microsoft middle manager trumps customer priorities. They have a quota to meet! But to play the Devil's advocate: back in the good old days, before Google was a thing, I would go out to customer sites and they would ask me with a straight face "why I needed the Internet?" to do my job. (These days I just tether to my phone, but this was long before that was a viable option.) Soon, access to AIs will be like access to Google: mandatory for getting your work done to an acceptable standard in a reasonable time. Those that fight against this are trying to hold the tide back with a broom.
- DonHopkins 1y agoBring Your Clippy to Home Day
- JdeBP 1y ago"Clippy did not want to harvest you with AI copilots. Clippy only wanted to help."
- lazystar 1y ago> Samer Baroudi, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft, insists this is for your own good. > > "This offers a safer alternative to other bring-your-own-AI scenarios, and empowers users with Copilot in their daily jobs while keeping IT firmly in control and all enterprise data protections intact," Baroudi explained in a blog post. whew. they seem to be confusing exactly who the customer is here. they think their target customer is the everyday windows user, but in reality the customer is every company's internal IT and infosec teams. theyre trying to persuade regular users to use the product, bit these users will in turm need to persuade their IT teams before this product can be used. big mix up for microsoft.
- thewebguyd 1y agoMicrosoft enables self service trials and purchases on 365 tenants by default. Every new feature they deploy is on by default. This new personal account thing is also enabled by default. Microsoft has been hostile to internal IT teams for a long time. They burned that bridge with me and my peers a long time ago. Unfortunately, MS knows it’s a captive audience and enterprises aren’t rushing to exit Microsoft anytime soon so they continue to get away with it. MS hopes that users will start a trial for something, become reliant on it, then convince managers to override the IT teams and buy it. Just like how other SaaS products market to individual users instead of to IT departments. It’s scummy. No one should do business with Microsoft anymore at this point. That includes NPM, GitHub, VSCode too don’t forget. MS will get away with anything they want unless people push back and dump them.
- Silhouette 1y agoUnfortunately, MS knows it’s a captive audience and enterprises aren’t rushing to exit Microsoft anytime soon so they continue to get away with it. That is the traditional spin but if they pull many stunts like this how long will it continue? Corporate IT teams are infamous for being slow and unwieldy but that's not entirely fair because the corporate IT teams are usually also the ones on the hook if anything goes wrong. Screw up some sort of data protection or regulatory compliance issue and that can have serious and lasting implications for the entire business. Move fast and break things is not what you want when x% of your global turnover is at stake if a regulator decides to make an example of you. Letting anyone else play with your toys is definitely not what you want in that scenario - why else do Windows Enterprise and Education editions not try to force the same hostile measures onto their customers as all the lower tiers? This looks like a huge misstep to me - the kind of mess that could actually be big enough to move the needle. And for Microsoft the greatest danger is probably the needle moving enough for everyone to see it. Once no-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft except for that guy who just did it really could be the beginning of the end for them. Microsoft also seems to have just abandoned one of the most powerful brands ever - Office - in a move that I can only assume was intended to show that Musk wasn't actually the craziest PR guy in the world when he renamed Twitter. There seems to be an outbreak of delusional thinking in Redmond and if this stuff doesn't get backtracked quickly I don't see a happy ending for MS here.
- danudey 1y agoIf Copilot was so great, surely I would have been asked to opt-in to a better Office 365 family plan with Copilot enabled, rather than trying to dark-pattern me into paying for a more expensive Copilot-enabled plan against my will (forcing me to attempt to cancel in order to be offered my old plan). It probably doesn't help that Microsoft is using 'Copilot' to mean so many different things - their Office AI integration, Github's Copilot thing, some laptops now apparently - so that users who know what's going on get irritated and ones that don't get confused.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoMicrosoft will clarify the situation by offering “CoPilot One”.
- jaggederest 1y agoCoPilot One XS Series X? You really don't want the CoPilot One Series X, it's really a neutered version, and the CoPilot One XS Series S is decent but really doesn't cost any different, unlike the CoPilot XS Series S, which is obsolete.
- willis936 1y agoI cancelled my 365 subscription last night and was surprised to see that I was scheduled to pay $100 next month for an annual subscription tier that adds AI features that I would never use. The most valuable plan they offer is the one they charge the least for.
- shrubble 1y agoThey did exactly this in the early days of computing, having people who bought microcomputers run DOS and set up ad hoc networks etc. then later, IT had to adopt and support it.
- arresin 1y agoRecall was my final straw.
- furyofantares 1y agoFrom the linked blog post it sounds like IT still fully controls permissions to use or not use this. It's just that users can pay for it.
- Normal_gaussian 1y agoLook up "echoleak"; the controls and permissions on co-pilot are an afterthought.
- fuzzzerd 1y agoThat would make sense, but that was not blindingly obvious from reading the article.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- adamredwoods 1y agoAre they trying to get more training data?
- thewebguyd 1y agoMore likely not enough businesses paying for Copilot licenses so they need to get employees using it to put pressure on IT teams to cave in and buy once a high up enough employee complains that it’s become essential to their job so they can boost Copilot sales and make line go up.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Nevermark 1y agoMicrosoft's logo should be a Banyan tree. They do it so well. > A banyan [...] develops accessory trunks from adjacent prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan
- toast0 1y agoUnisys might have something to say about that, they absorbed Banyan Systems[1] in 2003 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan_Systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan_Systems
- ChuckMcM 1y agoFirst I thought this was an old Aprils Fools post like the 'bring your gun to work day' posts back in the day. This is going to really make it hard to IT who are trying to enforce their company's contract mandated 'you can't charge AI work as billable work' clauses too. I would expect a push to the survey tool that identified all Microsoft subscription tokens on a person's equipment and narcing on those who do this. It feels like we're in the desperation zone here.
- gessha 1y agoWait, isn’t this similar to Microsoft+Explorer bundling from eons ago?
- kaibee 1y agoDidn't you get the memo that crime is legal now? Sure, maybe some admin in 2028, might start proceedings against them in 2029, that would be decided against them by ~2035. But you see, _this time_ forced bundling will work!
- f4uCL9dNSnQm 1y agoNo need to look so far back: https://www.theverge.com/news/776968/microsoft-teams-eu-commitments-avoid-fine https://www.theverge.com/news/776968/microsoft-teams-eu-comm... . I didn't even know they weaseled out their way out of that penalty.
- joshcsimmons 1y agoThis is an awesome move. AI is the largest enabler of stubborn slow companies making the latest models available to their people. That being said MS copilot is kinda klunky (like the rest of MS's product offerings)
- pharrington 1y agoI unilaterally declare that it's "Satya Nadella gives all Microsoft employees a $30,000 raise from his own bank account" Day.
- JonChesterfield 1y agoSolid marketing play. Streaming company IP to Microsoft is a dumb thing to do. Solid reason to not permit Copilot. This doesn't cleverly usurp the silly backwards IT team, it's sending confidential data to Microsoft for the benefit of Microsoft and the detriment of your company. I.e. clear cut firing offense. If the above makes sense to you, consider not using the windows 10/11 spyware system and/or not sending all company email through their servers.
- SilverElfin 1y agoDo they mean “force Copilot down your throat” day?
- Havoc 1y agoCan’t see that going down well with sysadmins or legal or compliance Even the ability to upload docs would already break rules potentially. eg data storage jurisdiction. Retention. Etc The places that do allow confidential info on copilot did a mountain of work to ensure all the legal and compliance is fine. No way this “btw it’s enabled now just use your own“ approach flies
- laweijfmvo 1y agoMaybe I get it, isn’t this forcing employees to pay for their own AI?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoThe idea is that users can circumvent IT policies which explicitly have not enabled or banned such products. Microsoft is hoping to sneak under the tent to enable more subscriptions directly from users if they cannot get companies to pay. Which is a bold play. At my company, were I to try and smuggle data out to a third party-that is normally an insta-termination level offense.
- thewebguyd 1y agoYeah this is MS spitting in the face of their actual customers, the IT teams that buy, deploy, and manage their software. I’m a sysadmin and this is basically MS saying “fuck you” to my face.
- dev1ycan 1y agoThe length that these companies are going to avoid another financial crisis is hilarious... They poured trillions in they don't know how to salvage it... It's scary because this will be worse than 2008, and it's right around the corner, think about how much Nvidia has grown because of LLM investment from companies like Microsoft and OpenAI, what will happen to inventory once it crashes? It's not just AI companies that will suffer, hardware companies will see massive dumping and unless they can do significant advancements soon, this won't suddenly be fixed. They cannot admit to themselves that they've created a massive bubble that cannot be contained.
- stephen_g 1y agoMicrosoft aren't really reading the room here... I have to use 365 for work, I keep trying to disable Copilot wherever I can and in various apps (like Outlook) it's turned itself back on a few times...
- givemeethekeys 1y agoMicrosoft will lose near 0% of customers over this. They might even gain market share! Existing customers will complain and then learn to live with and continue paying. There's nothing any of their competitors can do - look at Slack vs. Teams. Those who don't like it found alternatives a long time ago.
- thewebguyd 1y agoSysadmin here and this is the unfortunate truth. This is already disabled in my tenant along with the million other “features” MS shoves down our throats monthly. But, we remain and businesses have no appetite to exit Microsoft, not that there’s an equivalent bundled competitior to everything a 365 license gets you. So I keep tabs on what’s coming out of Redmond, curse at them inside, and then disable the crap and move on with my job. MS knows no one is leaving so they continue to get away with it.
- chupchap 1y agoLarge companies negotiate and get lower rates, but individuals get the sticker price. So it is in Microsoft's interest if more people took up the individual option. That said, I don't see it working in companies where everything is locked down.
- SoullessSilent 1y agoNext up, new job requirements added to job listings. MS 365 required.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y agoMicrosoft wants more data
- constantcrying 1y agoThis is absolutely ridiculous. Microsoft is encouraging employees of other companies to break company policy, so that Microsoft can gather more data. Uploading company internal documents to Microsofts servers, circumventing IT, is obviously something most companies would see as a severe violation of duties by the employee.
- pjmlp 1y agoThis reeks of desperation. We have compliance guidelines in place, Microsoft is trying to cater to the shadow IT folks that disobey company guidelines to try out stuff, and then have fun with IT and their employer when things go wrong.
- sceptic123 1y agoPresumably there's a paid option to prevent this in your org too, though maybe that paid option is to enable Copilot for your org
- iamleppert 1y agoWhy don't they start to fix their AI they have running in Azure? Talk about useless!