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Microsoft is looking to boost usage of its Copilot AI tools for businesses. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Microsoft is adding a new wrinkle to Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI service for businesses, with a free chat experience that includes the ability to create and use AI agents on a pay-as-you-go basis inside organizations.
The company says the new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, announced Wednesday morning, will be available to all users inside an organization, without paying the fee of $30/user per month for the full Microsoft 365 Copilot service.
The idea is to boost long-term AI adoption inside organizations despite budget constraints, betting that companies will find enough value to ultimately increase their number of premium subscribers.
Multiple reports last year indicated that some enterprise customers weren’t yet seeing enough benefit from Microsoft 365 Copilot to justify the cost.
Access to AI agents inside Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat will be charged by the company based on consumption, depending on the usage volume. Agents are pieces of AI-powered software that act autonomously on a user’s behalf.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, which integrates with the company’s productivity apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, is competing against Google, Amazon, OpenAI, Salesforce and others in the market for enterprise AI tools.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat experience will use OpenAI’s GPT-4o, with features including the ability to upload files for analysis, access Microsoft’s Copilot Pages collaboration experience, and generate AI images.
Microsoft says 365 Copilot Chat also includes enterprise data protection for data privacy and security inside companies.
The company hasn’t disclosed Microsoft 365 Copilot revenue or user numbers.
Overall, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said in October that the company’s AI revenue would reach a $10 billion annual run rate in the quarter that ended in December. Microsoft said last week that it will spend $80 billion on datacenters to train and deploy AI this fiscal year, which began in July.
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