Microsoft 365 with AI Copilot almost twice as expensive as version without
- July 19, 2023
- 0
Microsoft sets a price (in dollars) for using its AI Copilot. Redmond bills per user and charges almost twice as much as the basic version of Microsoft 365.
Microsoft sets a price (in dollars) for using its AI Copilot. Redmond bills per user and charges almost twice as much as the basic version of Microsoft 365.
The Microsoft Windows Copilot will not be free. Microsoft plans to charge companies with a Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, or Business Premium license $30 per month per user. The company announced this at its Inspire 2023 event. Euro prices are not yet known. With this crowd, it is immediately clear that the AI co-pilot is not for everyone.
For comparison: If you own Microsoft 365 E3, you pay 37.7 euros per user and month. Business Standard, which also includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, costs EUR 12.5 per month. An additional premium of $30 means enormous additional costs.
AI is expensive
The pricing strategy comes as no great surprise. The investments for the development of generative AI are enormous. Microsoft had to build a real supercomputer in Azure. In addition, the use of AI after training the models is also not free. While inference (using a trained model) requires significantly less computing power, large-scale inference such as Copilot’s global rollout requires a lot of specialized hardware.
Microsoft has not yet announced an exact launch date for Copilot. Many rumors are now circulating. For example, Windows Copilot would launch alongside Windows 23H2 in the second half of this year.
Microsoft previously shared the requirements a company must meet to get started with Copilot. In it, Microsoft referred primarily to Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 licenses, although it is now clear that Business Premium and Business Standard users can also get started with the AI.
AI for business
Microsoft Copilot is an AI system based on GPT-4: the technology behind ChatGPT (and Bing Chat). Copilot differs from well-known generative AI systems available today through its tight integration with enterprise Microsoft 365 services. Copilot works with the Microsoft 365 apps and can, for example, summarize e-mails or convert meetings into PowerPoints. In addition, Microsoft promises that Copilot will handle company data securely and comply with the applicable guidelines for this data. Data is never shared externally.
Source: IT Daily
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