Microsoft to Impose $30 User Fee for 365 AI Copilot Service to Businesses
During the Microsoft Inspire partner event, Microsoft revealed the pricing details for its AI-powered Copilot for Microsoft 365. This collection of contextual AI tools, developed through the collaboration with OpenAI, will be available for business accounts at a cost of $30 per user. Furthermore, Microsoft is introducing Bing Chat Enterprise, a privacy-centric variant of the AI chatbot that offers enhanced security measures and reassurance when dealing with confidential business information.
Revealed in March, Microsoft 365 Copilot is the company’s vision of the future of work. A GPT-4 based toolset allows you to create Office content using natural language text prompts. For example, you can ask PowerPoint to create a presentation based on a Word document, create a proposal from spreadsheet data, or summarize email messages and draft replies in Outlook—all by typing simple commands. “By basing responses on business data such as documents, emails, your calendar, chats, meetings and contacts, and connecting them to your work environment – the meeting you’re in now, the emails you’ve exchanged about the topic, the conversations you had last week – Copilot provides more diverse, relevant and actionable answers to your questions ,” Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s vice president of communications, wrote in an announcement today.
Microsoft began testing Copilot with a small group of select business partners earlier this year, but has yet to say when all business customers will have access to it. However, announcing its pricing could mean the date is fast approaching. $30/month. pricing applies to Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. The company has not yet announced Copilot’s consumer prices or availability.
Meanwhile, Bing Chat Enterprise is Microsoft’s more security-conscious version of its popular AI chatbot, which was released to consumers in February. “Since the launch of the new Bing in February, we’ve heard from many enterprise customers who are excited to give their organizations powerful new AI tools, but concerned that their business data is not being protected,” Shaw wrote. “That’s why today we’re announcing Bing Chat Enterprise, which provides AI-powered chat for organizations to work on commercial data protection. What goes in and out stays protected, giving commercial customers a managed opportunity to get better answers, more efficiency and new ways to be creative.”
Bing Chat Enterprise starts today in preview — at no additional cost — to Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium, and Business Standard customers. Additionally, the company says it will make the enterprise-focused chatbot available as a separate $5 subscription “in the future.”
