Microsoft AI: Options, Chaos, Convergence, or Complexity

September 30, 2025

This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

Have you wondered why it is easy to paste a jpeg image into PowerPoint and have it stay in one place? Have you tried to paste the same jpeg image into Word and have it stay in one place? What’s the difference? I will let you ponder the origin of the two programs and why pasting is baffling in sister products. Hint: Find out who coded the applications.

What’s this simple pair of questions have to do with putting Anthropic into Microsoft Copilot? I learned about this alleged management move in “Microsoft Adds Claude to Copilot but Cross Cloud AI Could Raise New Governance Challenges.”

My first thought was, “What is governance in the Microsoft Copilot everywhere approach to smart software?” I did the first thing a slouching high school student would do, I asked Claude for clarification:

Here’s my prompt for Claude:

The context for this prompt is Microsoft Corporation’s approach to smart software. The company is involved with OpenAI. The software giant acqui-hired other AI professionals. There is a team working on home-brew artificial intelligence. Now you (Anthropic Claude) will become available to the users of Copilot. In this context, what does the management buzzword “governance” when it comes to wrangling these multiple AI initiatives, deployments, and services?

Here’s a snapshot of Claude’s answer. I have edited it so it fits into this short blog post. Claude is a wordy devil.

…governance” represents the orchestration framework for managing competing priorities, overlapping capabilities, and divergent AI philosophies under a unified strategic vision.

What does the cited Computerworld article say?

Microsoft is presenting Claude not as a replacement for GPT models, but as a complementary option.

Okay, Copilot user. You figure it out. At least, that’s how I interpret this snippet.

The write up adds:

Unlike OpenAI’s GPT models, which run on Azure, Anthropic’s Claude runs on AWS. Microsoft has warned customers that Anthropic models are hosted outside Microsoft-managed environments and subject to Anthropic’s Terms of Service. So every time Claude is used, it crosses cloud borders that bring governance challenges, and new egress bills in latency.

Managing and optimizing seem to be the Copilot user’s job. I wonder if those Microsoft Certified Professionals are up to speed on the Amazon AWS idiosyncrasies. (I know the answer is, “Absolutely.” Do I believe it? Nope.)

Observations

If OpenAI falls over will Anthropic pick up the slack? Nope, at least not until the user figures out how to perform this magic trick.
Will users of Copilot know when to use which AI system? Eventually but the journey will be an interesting and possibly expensive one. Tuition in the School of Hard AI Knocks is not cheap.
Will users craft solutions that cross systems and maintain security and data access controls / settings? I know the answer will be, “Yes, Microsoft has security nailed.” I am a bit skeptical.

Net net: I think the multi AI model approach provides a solid foundation for chaos, complexity, and higher costs. But I am a dinobaby. What do I know?

Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, Microsoft, News

Comments

Got something to say?

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.