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Microsoft’s long-anticipated AI-powered productivity tool rolls out September 26 and its enterprise-targeting sister product 365 Copilot rolls out November 1
Published: September 21, 2023
Kieran Devlin
Microsoft has announced that its long-anticipated, AI-powered productivity tool Copilot will be released for consumers on Windows this week, while Copilot 365 will roll out for enterprise customers on November 1.
Planned for a September 26 rollout date, the news about Copilot’s imminent release was announced at Microsoft’s Surface and AI event on Thursday.
As well as its approaching rollout (five days!), Microsoft also introduced a soft relaunch for Copilot. As well as a striking new logo, Microsoft stated that it is rolling all the individual Copilots together as one unified product “for a consistent user experience” rather than what had been originally intended as separate Copilot AIs for different services, namely Windows 11, Bing and Edge.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that it will be “seamlessly available across all the apps and experiences you use most”, including Office 365, Bing and Windows. It can be accessed via the taskbar with the Win+C keyboard shortcut, offering assistance alongside every app. Copilot in Windows will feature the new Copilot icon, the new Copilot user experience, Bing Chat, and will be available to commercial customers for free.
Nadella commented:
It is hard to imagine that it was just 10 months ago that ChatGPT first came out. It is clear if you just look around since then that something new is happening in our industry and far beyond.”
However, the “one app” unified product is for people without a M365 subscription.
Enterprise customers will have to wait until November 1 for 365 Copilot, when it becomes available for customers on certain business and enterprise plans.
What 365 Copilot offers beyond Microsoft Copilot is commercial data protection, guaranteed security, privacy and compliance, the AI-powered Microsoft 365 Chat, and integration across the Microsoft 365 Apps.
Among 365 Copilot’s features is the ability to sum up documents or delegate email creation to the AI assistant. Copilot can generate new Word projects or blogs by directing it towards files which it can use as prompts. 365 Copilot can provide real-time summaries and action items from Teams meetings. It can visualise data or projections in Excel. In Outlook, Copilot can personalize any email to match a user’s unique style and tone of voice, including personalised sign-off.
“The more you work with Copilot, just like you would a colleague, the more natural it becomes,” said Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager of Microsoft 365. “The more context you give it, the better your results.”
Microsoft also announced “Copilot Lab”, which Stallbaumer described as “a new experience that will help people build new work habits for a new AI-powered era of productivity”. It resembled a hub for users to learn how to prompt Microsoft’s AI models effectively. Users can also share prompts with colleagues via the Lab.
Copilot will cost $30 per user per month and will be available for users with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium users when it becomes generally available.
The introduction of Copilot would almost double the cost for Microsoft E3 subscribers. For E3, Microsoft currently charges businesses $36 per user per month, including Office apps, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Microsoft 365 Business Standard customers now pay $12.50 per user per month, almost a third of the extra Copilot expense.
Microsoft recently shuttered Windows support for Cortana support, emphasising its commitment to adding more powerful AI-powered productivity tools across its suites, with Copilot at the epicentre.
Earlier this month, Microsoft also promised Copilot customers legal protections around copyright.
As questions over the legal risks of how AI parses copyright-protected IP continues to mount, the Copilot Copyright Commitment aims to assuage concerns around IP infringement among those intending to sign up for Microsoft’s AI-powered productivity tool.
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