Microsoft is opening the doors for all businesses to access AI-powered Office features. Microsoft’s Copilot for Microsoft 365 program launched in November, with enterprise customers having to commit to at least 300 users and pick up a phone to get on the list. That used to be a minimum additional cost of $9,000 for businesses, but now Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant is generally available to all businesses large and small with no minimum number of users.
“Given the demand and interest we’ve heard from small and medium-sized businesses, we’re removing the 300-seat minimum,” Divya Kumar, global head of marketing for search and AI at Microsoft, says in a one-on-one interview with Microsoft. the edge. “So now businesses of all sizes can get the $30 option and enable Copilot in Microsoft 365.”
Removing the 300-seat purchase requirement is a big change, but Microsoft is also removing the need for Microsoft 365 plans, opening up Copilot within Office apps for Office 365 E3 and E5 customers. Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium subscribers will also be able to purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 at $30 per user per month.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 still commands a hefty entry price at the moment, but it looks like the kind of launch we were originally expecting. The November launch was a pre-order event where most companies couldn’t get it right, and only the largest enterprise users were able to get Copilot access.
Microsoft promises that Copilot software within Office applications will change the way you create and edit documents. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, Copilot will work alongside Microsoft 365 apps like Assistant, appearing in the sidebar as a chatbot. It will also be available for inline recall, allowing users to create text in documents, create PowerPoint presentations based on Word documents, or even help use features like PivotTables in Excel.
Copilot is also available in Teams, which is perfect if you want to summarize a meeting you never attended or one you arrived late to. Email threads can also be summarized in Outlook, and Copilot can generate draft email responses in a variety of tones or lengths.
Microsoft now has three different versions of Copilot. There is the regular Copilot software available for free to both consumers and businesses, which is essentially a chatbot much like ChatGPT. Then there’s the new Copilot Pro option launching to consumers today for a $20 per month premium, which brings Copilot’s AI-powered features within Office apps and elsewhere. Microsoft is now also offering the same premium subscription with more features for businesses in the form of Copilot for Microsoft 365 at $30 per user per month. You can read more about the new Copilot Pro offering here.