Microsoft launched free Copilot Chat for business with paid AI agents

Microsoft announced the launch of Copilot, a free AI service for business, now called Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. It is complemented by paid AI agents to automate routine tasks, the use of which will be charged in various ways, including pay-as-you-go.

Image source: Surface / Unsplash

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is a rebranding of Bing Chat Enterprise, which was previously renamed Copilot. The key point, as noted by The Verge, was access to AI agents directly through the chat interface, which was previously only available in the full version of Microsoft 365 Copilot and required a subscription costing $30 per month per user.

AI agents are designed to act as virtual colleagues, capable of monitoring emails and automating a range of tasks. They can be created and consumed using Copilot Studio, including agents that work with web and Microsoft Graph cloud service data. “It’s a free and secure AI chat powered by GPT,” Jared Spataro, senior director of AI marketing at Microsoft, told The Verge. According to him, the chat capabilities are comparable to and even superior to competitors.

Microsoft’s pricing policy is quite flexible. Agents in Copilot Chat will be billed through Copilot Studio in Azure or via a pay-as-you-go model. Spataro reassures those wary of runaway costs: “We have created various mechanisms to control the costs of accessing AI agents, and companies can either pay as they use the agents or choose a suitable all-inclusive package.” It is noted that a trial subscription is not provided.

To calculate costs, the company offers the following model: one chat message costs 1 cent, a generative response costs 2 cents, and queries to Microsoft Graph cost 30 cents. “In this way, users can easily calculate their costs,” emphasizes Spataro. Microsoft also gave an example: if an AI agent in Copilot Chat answers employee questions by generating requests through the Microsoft Graph cloud gateway, then, for example, 6,400 messages would cost $64 per day.

It is worth saying that the Copilot Chat interface itself has remained virtually unchanged, and the same GPT-4o model is used to process requests. Users can upload files to analyze Word documents or data in Excel. These same features are available directly in Word and Excel with a full Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription.

Amid debate over the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot’s $30-a-month subscription, Microsoft hopes Copilot Chat for Business will help attract more companies to use the paid version, which is integrated into office apps.