Microsoft introduces 365 Copilot for commercial customers with a fee of $30 per user per month

Back in March, Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI-powered premium add-on to Office documents, designed to aid users in drafting Word documents, creating Excel spreadsheets, and designing PowerPoint presentations. Copilot has also been integrated into many more of the company's services such as the Windows operating system, and an Early Access program was launched in May for 600 business customers to trial the service, but a general release date has not yet been disclosed. However, the upgrade comes with a substantial additional cost of $30 per user per month for commercial customers, nearly doubling the monthly expense for Microsoft 365 E3 subscribers. This pricing applies to E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers.

Microsoft describes Copilot as a service that utilizes the Microsoft Graph, encompassing emails, calendar, chats, documents, and more. The service can generate updates from meetings, document summarization, email creation, and chats, offer project insights, accelerated Excel analysis, and create SWOT analyses using internal files and web data.

While Microsoft has yet to announce the public release date for Copilot, competitors like Google, Zoom, and Salesforce are also developing similar AI-powered features, creating a competitive market. The elevated price of Copilot is due to Microsoft's investment in AI capabilities and its collaboration with OpenAI. Microsoft is also working on its own AI chips to lessen dependence on Nvidia GPUs. Plans are in place to incorporate Copilot into Microsoft Teams as well, improving the phone calling experience and Teams Chat threads.