• Despite Copilot still being in preview, Microsoft has made the move to monetise the feature.
• Copilot Pro is a $20 per month service that enhances several Microsoft products by adding AI functionality.
• Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also now available to businesses of all sizes.

Since its massive investment into OpenAI, Microsoft has been on a steady push to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into as many products as possible. This can be seen in Copilot which is still slowly rolling out to Windows 11 users.

Now, despite Copilot only being in preview, Microsoft has announced the launch of Copilot Pro, a premium service that integrates with Microsoft 365 apps.

“Today we’re announcing the availability of Copilot Pro, a new subscription that delivers the most advanced features and capabilities of Microsoft Copilot to individuals looking to supercharge their Copilot experience. Whether you need advanced help with writing, coding, designing, researching or learning, Copilot Pro brings greater performance, productivity and creativity,” writes Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft.

This premium service will cost users $20 per month, the same as a ChatGPT Plus subscription.

For that money, subscribers get access to the latest AI models including GPT-4 as well as “enhanced AI image creation”. What we do find interesting is that subscribers also get access to Copilot GPT Builder which allows a user to build a custom Copilot for a specific topic. The Copilot GPT Builder is marked as “coming soon” though.

Microsoft says that Copilot Pro is best suited for individuals and organisations should rather make use of Copilot for Microsoft 365 which firms like Visa, BP, Honda, Pfizer and others are already doing.

Alongside the announcement about Copilot Pro, Microsoft announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now available to organisations of all sizes. Organisations won’t have to purchase a minimum of 300 subscriptions anymore and Office 365 E3 and E5 customers can now also purchase the subscription.

We are genuinely curious to see how these products perform and what the uptake on them is like. While having Copilot help with correcting grammar, generating Powerpoint slides and calculating Excel formulas is nice, whether it’s nice enough for a user to part with $20 every month is the question Microsoft is seemingly hoping to answer.

As mentioned, Microsoft made a sizeable investment into OpenAI in 2023 and it surely wants to start recouping some of that money hence the push to incorporate AI into more and more products while also expanding access to those products.

Let’s see how this move plays out.