Microsoft has finally made Copilot accessible to all users through 365 Apps. Here’s what you need to know.
Copilot chatbot Microsoft Generative AI is a very interesting competitor in the market. While the Google Bard bot is based on proprietary LLM, Copilot uses the same models as ChatGPT. It also gives users access to GPT-4 for free, for which ChatGPT users have to pay $20 per month. That being said, the Copilot experience is centered around text and image generation as well as conversational search. If you use Microsoft 365 for work, you already had access to the premium version of Copilot, and according to Microsoft, the latter should reach individuals. Now is the time, with Copilot Pro.
What does “Pro” mean in this Copilot Pro offering?
The main benefit of Copilot Pro is access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps. At launch, this includes Windows, Mac and iPad, but apps on iPhone and Android are coming soon. This means you can use Clippy AI in Microsoft Word, Excel (preview), PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote (Windows only). If you’ve already used AI tools like ChatGPT or even Copilot for free, you already have an idea of everything you can do in the Microsoft Office suite.
You can ask Copilot to generate a proposal in Word by taking notes from meetings through OneNote and third-party document clients; Ask the bot to analyze spreadsheets and output trends based on this data; Or click “Catch Up” in Outlook to analyze the most important emails according to Copilot. Microsoft has more usage examples on the official page.
These features are nothing new: Microsoft announced Copilot for Microsoft 365 in March last year, and business users have had access to Copilot in 365 apps since November, but this is the first time individuals can test these AI tools.
That being said, that’s not the only difference between Copilot Pro and its free version. With Pro, you have priority access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo during peak hours. While the free version of Copilot is already awesome because it allows you to use GPT-4 without paying for ChatGPT Plus, you’ll lose access to OpenAI’s more advanced LLM when demand is high.
Switching to the Pro offering lets you take advantage of DALL-E 3, which includes Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator), which includes landscape images (and not just portraits). You also have 100 “boosts” instead of 15, which means you’ll have more opportunities to prioritize your image generation requests. As with the ChatGPT Plus subscription, you’ll also be able to create your own CoPilot GPT, an easy option to generate a CoPilot bot capable of doing whatever you want.
How much does Copilot Pro cost?
At launch, Microsoft is asking $20 per month for CoPilot Pro. However, this offer does not include access to Microsoft 365 and its apps. To use Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., you still need to subscribe to 365, which costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year for individuals. This raises the price to $25.83 or $26.99 per month to take advantage of Copilot Pro.
And the bill is higher if you’re on the family offer: Copilot Pro is only accessible through individual subscriptions. In other words, all members of the 365 Family offer will have to pay $20 per month to access it individually.
You can subscribe to Copilot Pro through the Microsoft website.
