Microsoft is opening up access to its AI-powered Office features for all businesses. In order to be added to the list for Microsoft’s Copilot for Microsoft 365, business clients have to commit to at least 300 users and pick up the phone. The programme debuted in November. Previously, companies had to pay an extra $9,000 minimum fee for Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, but as of right now, all sizes of organisations may use it without any user minimum.
Divya Kumar, Microsoft’s global manager of marketing for search and AI, tells The Verge in a one-on-one interview that “we’re removing that 300 seat minimum given the demand and interest we’ve heard from small and medium-sized businesses.” Therefore, companies of all sizes may now activate Copilot in Microsoft 365 by purchasing the $30 option.
What happens with Microsoft 365 subscriptions?
Not only is the 300-seat purchase limit gone, but Microsoft is also removing the requirement for Microsoft 365 subscriptions, allowing Office 365 E3 and E5 users to use Copilot inside Office apps. Copilot for Microsoft 365 may be purchased by subscribers to Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium for $30 per user, per month.
Although Copilot for Microsoft 365 still has a high entry price for now, this seems to be the kind of launch that we had anticipated. Because most organisations couldn’t get it right and only the largest corporate users could obtain access to Copilot, the November launch was more akin to a presale event.
Copilot is the new “pilot” in the business
Microsoft claims that the way documents are written and modified will be altered by Copilot, an internal feature of Office programmes. Using GPT-4 from OpenAI, The Copilot will function as an assistant alongside Microsoft 365 apps, showing up as a chatbot in a sidebar. Additionally, it will be able to be summoned inline, enabling users to produce text in documents, make PowerPoint presentations from Word documents, and even assist with Excel capabilities like pivot tables.
If you wish to sum up a meeting that you didn’t attend or that you arrived late to, Copilot is also accessible in Teams. Outlook email conversations may also be summarised, and Copilot can generate many draft email answers with different durations and tones.
Microsoft now offers Copilot in three distinct versions. There is the standard Copilot, which is simply a chatbot similar to ChatGPT and is free for both consumers and enterprises. Then there is the brand-new Copilot Pro option, which is available to customers now for a $20 monthly premium and offers AI-powered Copilot capabilities both outside and inside Office apps. Microsoft now provides companies with Copilot for Microsoft 365, a premium subscription with additional capabilities, for $30 per user per month. You can click this link to read more about the new Copilot Pro option.