A few months after presenting Copilot, the artificial intelligence-based assistant for Office, Microsoft finally revealed the price we will have to pay for using it. The technology giant took advantage of the start of its Inspire conference to announce that Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available for $30 a month.
Microsoft 365 Copilot will be offered in Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, and E5 plans. The cost does not include the monthly fee for the office suite, so if you contract the assistant for Standard Enterprise (12 dollars), you would have to pay 42 dollars per user. At first glance the price seems high, although justified if it delivers everything it promises
Copilot is a GPT-4 based wizard, the artificial intelligence that powers ChatGPT. Its integration unlocks new features in the apps that make up the Microsoft 365 suite. In Word, for example, you can compose a draft, add content to existing documents, summarize text and rewrite sections. In PowerPoint it is capable of transforming a Word file into a complete presentation, complete with speaker notes.
For their part, users of Excel they will not have to learn formulas or shortcuts, since it will be enough to use natural language for Copilot to perform the math operation. The wizard can also build models, identify trends, and create visualizations with a simple instruction. In all cases, the AI is offered as a chatbot that appears in the side menu, similar to Bing in Edge.
Over the past few months, Microsoft has been testing its AI with a limited number of companies. Yusuf Mehdi, director of consumer marketing, mentioned that the early access phase already has 600 customers, including Emirates, Lumen and KPMG. According to Mehdi, “the more they use Copilot, the more their enthusiasm grows” for the assistant.
With Copilot, Microsoft bets with everything on artificial intelligence
Copilot’s arrival in Office is part of a strategy to Bring artificial intelligence to all Microsoft products and services. After making a multi-million dollar investment in OpenAI, the technology company wants to take advantage of the technology and an example is Bing with ChatGPT.
The popular chatbot was integrated into the web browser to make queries or generate texts through natural language. After a few months, Bing has made the leap to business customers with Enterprise Chat. The app maintains the core functionality of its web counterpart, though the AI relies on a closed dataset to train the model.
Microsoft is also preparing for the deployment of Copilot on Windows 11. Artificial intelligence will be added to the operating system to offer suggestions and support the user in their day-to-day. Like Office, the assistant will be able to execute tasks and automate processes based on what appears on the screen, similar to what was once wanted with Cortana.
For now all these functions are in a beta phase and there is no defined release date. Microsoft 365 Copilot and Bing Chat Enterprise will be available for enterprise customers, while Windows Copilot could land in the fall update for consumer versions of Windows 11.