Microsoft announced several major updates to its AI-powered productivity assistant Copilot, including launching a new premium subscription service called Copilot Pro for consumers and expanding Copilot capabilities for commercial customers. The updates aim to bring more advanced AI features to a wider audience and better compete with chatbot sensation ChatGPT.
Copilot Pro Brings Advanced AI to Consumers for $20 Per Month
The most notable announcement is the launch of Copilot Pro, a paid subscription service that provides consumers with exclusive access to advanced AI capabilities powered by a new large language model called GPT-4 Turbo.
Key details on Copilot Pro:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Cost | $20 per user per month |
| Availability | Available in the Microsoft Store starting January 18, 2023 |
| Supported platforms | Windows 11, iOS, Android |
| Key capabilities | Advanced conversational abilities, enhanced writing assistance, deeper personalization |
| Underlying AI model | GPT-4 Turbo – more powerful version of GPT-4 trained exclusively on Microsoft data |
Copilot Pro brings features consumers have been requesting like deeper personalization of responses based on user data and preferences stored in Microsoft Graph. The assistant can also hold more advanced conversations and provide enhanced writing support like expanding outlines, rewriting passive voice, and summarizing key points.
The new GPT-4 Turbo model powering Copilot Pro is a more powerful iteration of Microsoft’s GPT-4 model released last year. GPT-4 Turbo has been trained exclusively on Microsoft data including documents from Office 365, search queries from Bing, and other proprietary data sources.
Expanded Copilot Capabilities for Commercial Customers
In addition to the consumer launch, Microsoft announced several upgrades to Copilot for commercial customers across businesses of all sizes:
- Copilot for Teams – Brings AI-powered productivity features into Teams chats and meetings, including joining meetings as a virtual participant, live transcription and translations, creating meeting notes and action items.
- Copilot for Small Businesses – Makes Copilot available to small business customers on Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Business Premium plans at no additional cost. Previously only available for large enterprises.
- Viva Engage and Power BI integration– Copilot can now scan conversations in Viva Engage and surface relevant Power BI reports and insights.
These business-focused upgrades demonstrate Microsoft’s strategy to make Copilot a horizontal AI layer across all its productivity applications – from Office and Outlook to Teams and Power Platform. The seamless integration aims to provide consistent AI assistance to users wherever they are working.
Battling ChatGPT with Smarter Assistants
The major Copilot updates come just weeks after OpenAI’s viral launch of ChatGPT, which offers uncannily human-like conversational abilities. Microsoft clearly aims to preserve Copilot’s position as a leader in AI productivity assistants.
When Copilot first launched in 2021, it set itself apart by deeply integrating with Office apps to provide writing and coding assistance. Over the past 2 years, Microsoft has continued enhancing those integrations while OpenAI pursued a more generalized conversational agent.
With Copilot Pro’s expanded conversational abilities and launch on mobile platforms, Microsoft is attempting to catch up on ChatGPT’s viral buzz while still leveraging its strengths with Office 365 integrations. Still, some analysts note Copilot still lacks the “wow factor” of ChatGPT’s remarkably human-like responses.
What’s Next in the Productivity Assistant Wars
The battle for dominance in AI assistants integrated with productivity software is clearly heating up between Microsoft and OpenAI. Looking ahead, Microsoft is likely to continue enhancing Copilot’s capabilities to handle more generalized conversations beyond work tasks.
OpenAI will aim to expand ChatGPT’s specialized skills for work scenarios while also enhancing its personalization and memory capabilities. Both companies may also look to tap into their vast troves of user data to produce assistants that feel more personalized to individual users.
Whichever company manages to perfect the balance between conversational intelligence, personalized memory, and deep productivity software integration may determine who leads the next era of artificial intelligence.
To err is human, but AI does it too. Whilst factual data is used in the production of these articles, the content is written entirely by AI. Double check any facts you intend to rely on with another source.
