Hard to "beat" someone when you have a very close partnership and you're using their model (GPT-4V), likely this is developed quickly with input from OpenAI. I don't think it's right to think of the two as competing at this point.

If I understand correctly, there is zero overlap between Microsoft AI Research efforts that use GPT4(V) and OpenAI's development.

OpenAI gave Microsoft the model weights, and Microsoft hosts it on Azure for MS Research. None of the Azure usage analytics goes back to OpenAI except via bug reports and publications.

They are pretty closely tied, and are directly building atop GPT4V for this, I would not bet that they are this decoupled.

Just my experience. Tried Copilot(the one for Office) but was left disappointed.

It said it could not do say add an image to a ppt/create one. When it clearly could. Chat was was overly simplified and fixed the wrong problem. Randomly changed say Excel sheet with no clear undo after multiple steps Plus how it works is hidden, so not sure if they are using 3.5, 4 or something else. So no idea if that is causing the problem.

MS is putting out a lot of things quickly. But the quality is just not there in my experience. They are doing way too many things too fast to make any one thing good.