AI Strategy / Search & Media

The Great Retraction: Why Microsoft Abandoned the Consumer Chatbot Race for Enterprise Workflows When the generative AI race ignited, every major hyperscaler raced to deploy a consumer-facing conversational companion. Microsoft rebranded Bing, pushed Copilot onto consumer desktops, and bet heavily that individual users wanted an omnipresent personal chatbot. In late September 2026, Microsoft quietly called … Read more

For the first two years of the generative AI boom, foundational models predominantly favored a single demographic: English-fluent knowledge workers typing text prompts into clean browser interfaces. That baseline represents a tiny fraction of global digital users. Across emerging economies—most notably India—the next phase of digital connectivity belongs to users who interact primarily through voice, … Read more