Photo: Microsoft.
Microsoft is adding an AI chat solution with a pay-as-you-go element to the existing free chat experience that current Microsoft 365 customers enjoy.
In a blog post, Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work at Microsoft, said that the goal was to “empower every employee with a Copilot and to transform every business process with agents”.
Copilot Chat includes:
- Free, secure AI chat powered by GPT-4. You can use it to do market research, write a strategy document, or prepare for a meeting. File uploads allows you to add any document to the chat and ask Copilot to summarise key points in a Word document, analyse data in an Excel spreadsheet, and suggest improvements to a PowerPoint presentation. With Copilot Pages, you can collaborate on content with people and AI in real-time—adding content from Copilot, your files, or from the internet. And you can quickly create AI-generated images for campaigns, product launches, and social media posts.
- Agents that are accessible right in the chat using natural language, so anyone can easily create agents to automate repetitive tasks and business processes. Agents are priced on a metered basis, and IT stays in control. IT admins can also build organisation-wide agents and manage agent deployment, all powered by Microsoft Copilot Studio.
- IT controls with the Copilot Control System include enterprise data protection (EDP) for data privacy and security, the ability to govern access and manage the usage and lifecycle of Copilot and agents, and measurement and reporting.
Answers are how the agent communicates with users and are core to the prompt-and-response interaction model. Answers are charged for every agent response, not for user prompts.
Microsoft's charges for Copilot+. Photo: Microsoft.
According to Microsoft, the cost of using the agents is measured in “messages” with the total price calculated based on the sum of messages sent. Users can purchase “messages” through the Copilot Studio meter in Microsoft Azure. If bought under the “pay-as-you-go option”, the cost will be US$0.01/message. Alternatively, pre-paid message packs priced at US$200 for 25,000 messages/month can also be bought.
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