Microsoft launches Pro plan for Copilot

Microsoft clearly hopes Copilot, the umbrella brand for its portfolio of artificial intelligence-powered content generation technologies, will become an important revenue project going forward. This may not be far from the truth. According to the company, more than 40% of Fortune 100 companies participate in its Copilot early access program.

But given the huge cost of running GenAI models in the cloud, getting Copilot from an expense to a reliable source of revenue will require continued (ideally massive) growth.

Microsoft certainly realizes this, launching a consumer-focused paid Copilot program today and relaxing eligibility requirements for its enterprise-level Copilot product. The goal appears to be to expand the base of potential paying Copilot customers while also making Microsoft’s existing services (namely Word, Excel and other applications in the tech giant’s Microsoft 365 family) more attractive through artificial intelligence capabilities.

Copilot Pro — the new consumer plan priced at $20 per user per month — gives customers access to Word, Excel (in preview, currently only available in English), PowerPoint, Outlook and more on PC, Mac and iPad Copilot GenAI feature in OneNote. That is, if they have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plan. Copilot Pro is not bundled with a Microsoft 365 subscription. Like Copilot’s enterprise product (Copilot for Microsoft 365), it’s a premium add-on – bringing the total cost of the lowest-tier Microsoft 365 subscription to $27 per month (Microsoft 365 Personal $6.99 per month, Copilot Pro $20 per month) .

Copilot Pro comes with the same Microsoft 365 features that enterprise customers have been using for some time.

Copilot writes, edits, summarizes, and generates text in Word and OneNote. Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint transforms natural language commands into designed presentations and data visualizations. In Outlook, Copilot can help draft email responses, with switches to adjust length or tone.

In addition to the Microsoft 365 upgrade, Copilot Pro subscribers can get 100 “boosts” per day in Microsoft’s AI-powered image creation tool Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator) to speed up the image generation process – as well as improve the quality of the results and landscape format options. They can give priority to the latest GenAI models that support Copilot, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo, which Microsoft claims can achieve better performance during peak hours.

In the future, Copilot Pro subscribers will be able to switch between models based on their preferences. If greater customization is required, Microsoft’s upcoming Copilot GPT Builder will be able to create theme-tailored models through prompt sets. “Copilot”.

Copilot GPT Builder sounds a lot like OpenAI’s recently released GPT Builder for creating custom chatbots powered by OpenAI’s GenAI model. But some speculate that Copilot GPT Builder will come with Microsoft services and application-specific integrations.

Business co-pilot

As Microsoft launches premium Copilot for consumers, it’s also expanding the service’s business availability.

Starting today, Copilot is generally available to organizations that subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, or Office 365 E3 and Office E5. Previously, Copilot for Microsoft 365 had a minimum purchase of 300 users and required a Microsoft 365 license, but both requirements have been removed.

There are some differences to note between Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot Pro, the main difference being Copilot in Teams. Enterprise Copilot customers (not consumers) get “Copilot” in Teams, which provides instant summaries and action items, handling tasks such as identifying follow-up people and creating meeting agendas.

Compare different co-pilot programs.

In addition, Copilot for Microsoft 365 comes with what Microsoft describes as “enterprise-grade data protection” and semantic indexing, a back-end system that creates maps of data and content in an organization, allowing Copilot to provide a ostensibly more personalized Services and related responses.

Copilot OK for Microsoft 365 customers Access expanded customization options through Copilot Studio, an enhanced version of Copilot GPT Builder. unveiling In November, Copilot Studio allowed users to build their own chatbots and plugins and fine-tune them using first-party company profiles.

New free features

Microsoft’s attention may be turning to paid Copilot program, but the company isn’t completely Ignore free users.

Today is the launch of Copilot GPT, which, like OpenAI’s GPT, is tailored to topics of special interest. This morning, a handful of Copilot GPTs launched on Copilot’s web client, fine-tuned to answer questions about fitness, travel, and cooking.

Copilot’s free mobile app — Access GPT-4, DALL-E 3 for image creation, use images from your phone when chatting with Copilot, and sync chat history between mobile devices, PCs and the web —Now available for Android and iOS. Microsoft said it is adding Copilot to the Microsoft 365 mobile app for Android and iOS for users with a Microsoft account. Microsoft 365 mobile app Copilot integration will be launched next month, allowing users to export content created using Copilot to Word or PDF files.

Finally, Microsoft said it is expanding the number of languages ​​supported by Copilot. In the first half of 2024, Copilot will expand to Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.