Microsoft Teams, Excel, Word to get AI features as company announces new subscription plans

Microsoft has announced its new subscription service, Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to popular Office products like Word, Excel, and Teams. The service will come at an additional cost of $30 per month which is expected to increase monthly prices for enterprise customers by up to 83 per cent. This move aims to generate additional revenue through recurring subscriptions.

Microsoft Copilot will help users leverage AI features such as ranking incoming emails, summarizing meetings, analyzing spreadsheet data, offering writing prompts, and designing presentations. The service is built on generative AI technology and is grounded in users' business data stored in the Microsoft Graph, encompassing emails, calendars, chats, and documents. Microsoft assures users that Copilot complies with their preset security, privacy, and compliance policies for Microsoft 365.

Although Microsoft hasn't announced a specific timeline for its public rollout, the service is currently being tested by 600 enterprise customers, including Goodyear and General Motors. This subscription is part of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to enhance its suite of Office software and make it more appealing to businesses seeking to integrate AI into their workflows.

The introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot comes as tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and IBM are competing to offer consumer-driven generative AI tools. Microsoft's new service aims to provide businesses with AI-powered features to streamline document summaries, email generation, and Excel analysis, among other tasks.

The $30 per user per month subscription fee represents a significant premium over current Microsoft 365 plans. For example, businesses subscribed to Microsoft 365 E3 will nearly double their costs, and for Microsoft 365 Business Standard, the cost will almost triple.

Microsoft's substantial investment in building out its AI-powered offerings, including a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, contributes to the higher pricing of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Additionally, the increasing demand for Nvidia GPUs to power AI features has driven up costs. 

Bing Chat 

Apart from just pricing, Microsoft has also launching Bing Chat Enterprise, an enhanced version of Bing Chat with added commercial data protection. It will be available in preview mode and included at no additional cost in select Microsoft 365 plans.