Oh so that's AI now?

ORDERED at a fast food recently?  Oh that's AI now.   Contacted customer service recently? Oh that's AI now.   Thought Youtube was looking a bit tweaked?  Oh that's AI now.

Only moments ago, humans took your drive-through order, drafted your marketing email, researched your competitor, or explained tax rules to a confused client.

Microsoft Research’s September 2025 study of 200,000 Bing Copilot conversations proves that ordinary Americans now delegate exactly these tasks to a free chatbot every day. Getting Information, Writing, Analysing Data, Teaching, and Advising dominate both what users ask for and what the AI actually performs. These five activities sit at the heart of the seven occupational groups registering the highest AI applicability scores: Computer and Mathematical, Office and Administrative Support, Sales, Arts/Design/Entertainment/Media, Business and Financial Operations, Community and Social Service, and Educational Instruction.

In 40% of sessions the AI’s action differs entirely from the user’s original goal, meaning the system is not merely assisting but outright completing billable work once done by colleagues, consultants, or call-centre staff. White Castle’s AI drive-through voice, rolled out widely in 2024, already lifts order accuracy from 87% to 98%.

Productivity is therefore shifting in real time, often without formal deployment programmes or capital budgets. Millions of knowledge and service workers have quietly voted with their keyboards and headsets.

Boards still modelling 2026 headcount on 2023 assumptions about “irreplaceably human” tasks may discover that the cost base has already moved beneath them.