Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the CES conference in Las Vegas on January 9, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft said Tuesday that small businesses can now sign up for the Copilot virtual assistant in the company’s productivity apps. And consumers who pay for Microsoft 365 software can sign up for a new paid version of Copilot.
The updates will help Microsoft expose more of its customers to genetic artificial intelligence, a tech startup OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot that went public last year and can compose natural-sounding text with a person’s brief written command. Expanding access can help the company begin to cover the cost of building AI-enabled data center infrastructure.
Investors have been betting on Microsoft to capitalize on demand for artificial intelligence in operating systems, cloud, productivity, web search and security, even as it faces competition from Amazon and Google. Last week Microsoft bounced back from apple the title of the most valuable listed company.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has been conveying lately that artificial intelligence is at the heart of the software maker’s identity. “Our vision is pretty simple. We are the Copilot company,” Nadella said at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Seattle in November.
Microsoft began offering Copilot for Microsoft 365 — building on OpenAI’s large language models — to large companies in November and to faculty and staff at educational institutions in December. For them, the add-on costs $30 per person per month, on top of their existing subscription cost.
Now, small businesses that pay for Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard can sign up for up to 299 licenses for $30 per person per month, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface, wrote in a blog post.
In addition, he wrote, Microsoft is waiving the 300-seat minimum for commercial plans that has been in place since November and will allow Copilot to be used by those with Office 365 E3 or E5, which cost less than full Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
People who wanted to use Copilot were able to access it for free in several ways, including through the Bing search engine and at copilot.microsoft.com. However, those paying for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions were unable to use it in Word, Excel, Outlook and other applications. This is changing. Starting Tuesday, users can sign up for the new Copilot Pro add-on for $20 per person each month.
Those with Copilot Pro get “priority access to the latest models — starting today with OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo,” Mehdi wrote.
They’ll be able to use the peak model at peak times, switch models, and design custom chatbots using an upcoming tool called Copilot GPT Builder.
“Whether you need advanced help with writing, coding, designing, researching or learning, Copilot Pro delivers greater performance, productivity and creativity,” wrote Mehdi.
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