Microsoft recently announced that small businesses can now subscribe to its Copilot virtual assistant within its productivity apps, while paid users of the Microsoft 365 suite will also be able to start subscribing to the new edition of Copilot Pro.
These measures will help more Microsoft customers access the company's AI assistant, and the company hopes the increased traffic will help recoup costs invested in building Copilot and corresponding infrastructure like data centers.
In fact, starting from November, with the assistance of OpenAI's large models, Microsoft has been providing Copilot assistant services for large corporations, applicable to the Microsoft 365 suite, and expanded services to educational institution staff and teachers in December. Now, small businesses paid for Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard can also register up to 299 licenses - at $30 per person per month.
In addition, Microsoft has canceled the requirement of min 300 seats for commercial plans that has been in place since November of last year, and will allow users of Office 365 E3 or E5 to use Copilot, thus significantly reducing the cost of using Copilot for both individuals and corporations.
In fact, many consumers eager to use Copilot could already use the AI assistant for free in several ways, including via the Bing search engine and visiting the Copilot official website. However, previously paid users of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions couldn't use it within Word, Excel, Outlook, and other Office applications.
But now, this is changing as well, because from Tuesday onwards, Office 365 users can activate the new Copilot Pro add-on for $20 per person per month. Copilot Pro users will receive benefits such as priority to use the latest models - like starting to use OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo right away.
Moreover, Copilot Pro will offer stronger generative AI capabilities, such as creating custom GPT, using the Designer's Image Creator to make image creations 100 times a day. This feature will provide faster creation speeds and improved image quality, plus, users will also be able to create landscape images.
Notably, Copilot Pro will also be supported in Android and iOS mobile apps. Microsoft believes that Copilot Pro can help enhance work efficiency in areas like writing, marketing, development, daily life, entertainment, etc.
Whether you need advanced help with writing, coding, designing, researching, or learning, Copilot Pro brings greater performance, productivity, and creativity, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's Windows and Surface head, expressed on his social media.
In sum, Microsoft is lowering the barriers for consumers to use Copilot and hopes to further enhance traffic to this AI assistant by way of updated features.
In fact, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has been emphasizing the importance of AI to this tech giant. Our vision is pretty straightforward. We are the Copilot company, Nadella announced at Microsoft's Ignite conference in Seattle in November.
In the past year, AI has played a key role in Microsoft's growth - in 2023, benefits from investments and integrations in the AI tech field led to a 58% increase in Microsoft's stock price for the year.
Meanwhile, investors are betting on Microsoft to utilize generative AI to satisfy needs in operating systems, the cloud, productivity, web search, and security to fuel its rapid growth: According to estimates for the compound annual growth rate of sales and earnings per share by 2025, analysts believe Microsoft can reach 14.3% and 16.2% respectively. These data not only vastly surpass expectations for the S&P 500 Index, but even reach twice that of Apple's expectations.
Notably, last week, these market expectations helped Microsoft surpass Apple to become the world's most valued company, and Microsoft's AI prospects, leadership in capitalizing on AI, as well as the suite of AI tools represented by Copilot definitely became critical factors propelling Microsoft's recent surge in market capitalization.
However, as Microsoft increases its traffic attraction efforts on Copilot, perhaps this tech giant has greater ambitions for commercialization and capitalization in the AI sector.