TechDogs-"Microsoft Brings Copilot Chat To Microsoft 365 For Businesses And Individuals"

Enterprise Solutions

Microsoft Brings Copilot Chat To Microsoft 365 For Businesses And Individuals

By TechDogs Bureau

TD NewsDesk

Updated on Fri, Jan 17, 2025

Overall Rating
Since the launch of the ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has gone bananas for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and all its capabilities.

The ability to get long-form content by inputting simple text prompts is nothing short of magic.

However, that’s not where the line is drawn for this brilliant technology. Chatbots can now generate code, images, videos, music, audio, and more using the same input method.

This has made AI technology highly sought after by almost all businesses and individual users and has put immense pressure on technology companies to deliver the best and latest solutions.

As one of the biggest backers of OpenAI, Microsoft has gained a tremendous advantage in this regard. It has the inside track to deploy and build upon OpenAI’s AI solutions within its products. Microsoft did just that with its Copilot chatbot, which was based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 series of LLMs.

Now, the company announced that it was bringing its prized GenAI chatbot into its suite of productivity and collaboration cloud-based software service—Microsoft 365. In back-to-back announcements, the company revealed the Copilot service will be made available for business and individual users.


Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat For Business


On January 15, Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new product that fuses Copilot’s AI capabilities with its Microsoft 365 suite of software services.

It can be used by the entire workforce across a business—from customer service representatives to marketing leads to frontline technicians.

The new product comes with Copilot’s free and secure AI chat, powered by GPT-4o, which can be used to summarize Word documents, simplify Excel spreadsheets, enhance PowerPoint presentations, and more, while also creating AI-generated images for campaigns, social media posts, reports, etc.

It also brings commercial users pay-as-you-go on-demand AI agents, which can be used to automate repetitive tasks and business processes using natural language. These agents are accessible right in the chat. They will be controlled by IT admins, who can also create, enhance, and deploy agents across the organization through Microsoft Copilot Studio.

TechDogs-"An Image Showing Microsoft 365 Copilot's Availability And Services"
Organizations can also leverage the foundational capabilities of Microsoft’s Copilot Control System to manage and measure its usage, which includes enterprise data protection (EDP) to enforce data privacy and security and the ability to govern access.

While some of the features are available for free (and metered pricing), the advanced ones will come at the price of a $30 per user per month Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription. The subscription product is called Microsoft 365 Copilot, which includes everything in Copilot Chat and more.

“Our ambition is to empower every employee with a Copilot and to transform every business process with agents,” said Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work at Microsoft. “From Dow to Disney, companies are going big with Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents, uncovering key scenarios that can deliver real ROI.”


Copilot In Microsoft 365 Personal And Family


A day after launching Copilot Chat for Business, Microsoft introduced Copilot to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers, which will also see the infusion of Microsoft Designer.

Building on Microsoft’s January 2024 move to bring Microsoft Copilot Pro to its consumer early adopters that showed access to Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps is a top reason for subscribing, Microsoft decided to introduce Copilot into its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions.

This move comes with a $3 per month increase (in the US, check local pricing) in subscription prices, marking the first hike in 12 years since it was released. Prior to this, they had to shell out an additional $20 per month to leverage its AI capabilities.

Users will be able to choose if they want to include Copilot’s AI features in their subscription plan or not.

This move enables most of the company’s 84 million consumer subscribers to access Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Designer, Paint, Photos, Notepad, and the newly renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

Copilot can help users with a variety of tasks and activities, such as creating food recipes, analyzing budgets, summarizing lengthy emails, organizing and rewriting noted thoughts, creating and editing images, and even enhancing vacation photos with narrative flows, slides, and designs.

TechDogs-"The Cover Image Of The Blog Post Announcing The Introduction Of Copilot In Microsoft 365 Personal And Family"
Its usage will be curtailed, with users receiving a monthly allotment of credits to use across Microsoft’s products, which the company feels should suffice for most subscribers.

However, avid and heavy users of the AI features can upgrade to Copilot Pro to bypass usage limits.

In an interview, Gareth Oystryk, Senior Director of Marketing for Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365, said, “We know that people are willing to pay for the integration into Microsoft 365.”

“Copilot Pro is an opportunity to learn from our power users and early adopters. Our plan all along has been how do we bring this value to as many subscribers as possible in a way that works for them and for us.”

What do you think about Microsoft’s move to infuse Copilot into its Microsoft 365 product?

Let us know in the comments below!

First published on Fri, Jan 17, 2025

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