Microsoft is opening up Copilot AI within Office apps for all businesses

Microsoft is opening the doors to all businesses to access its AI-powered Office features. Microsoft CoPilot for Microsoft 365 launched in November, requiring enterprise customers to commit to at least 300 users and pick up a phone to join the list. It has a minimum spend of $9,000 for businesses, but now Microsoft's AI-powered assistant is generally available to all businesses, large and small, with no user minimum.

“Based on the demand and interest we've heard from small and medium businesses, we're eliminating at least 300 seats,” says Divya Kumar, Microsoft's global head of marketing for search and AI. on the edge. “So now businesses of all sizes can get the $30 option and run Copilot on Microsoft 365.”

Removing the 300-seat purchase requirement is a big change, but Microsoft is also removing the requirement for Microsoft 365 plans and opening up Copilot within Office applications to Office 365 E3 and E5 customers. Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium subscribers can purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 for $30 per user per month.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 still demands a steep entry price, but it feels like the kind of release we originally expected. The November launch was more like a pre-order event as most businesses couldn't get it right, and only the largest enterprise users could get CoPilot access.

Microsoft promises that Copilot within Office applications will change the way documents are created and edited. Powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI, Copilot sits alongside Microsoft 365 apps like an assistant and appears as a chatbot in the sidebar. It enables users to draw inline, create text in documents, create PowerPoint presentations based on Word documents, or use features like PivotTables in Excel.

Copilot is also available in Teams, great if you want to summarize a meeting you've never attended or a meeting you're late for. Email threads in Outlook can also be shortened, and Copilot can create draft email responses with different tones or lengths.

Microsoft now has three different versions of Copilot. There's also regular Copilot, a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, available for free to consumers and businesses. A new Copilot Pro option is launching today for customers at a premium of $20 per month, offering AI-powered Copilot features for office applications and elsewhere. Microsoft now offers the same premium subscription to businesses in the form of CoPilot for Microsoft 365 for $30 per user, with additional features added per month. Read more about the new Copilot Pro offering here.