On Wednesday, Microsoft announced the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new subscription plan geared towards enterprises that incorporates support for artificial intelligence (AI) agents. This move continues the company’s aggressive rollout of its Copilot subscription, targeting both businesses and individual users. The updated plan offers a more flexible approach to accessing AI services, shifting from a fixed subscription fee to a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Additionally, it includes free access to Microsoft’s Copilot Chat for businesses.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Introduced
Microsoft provided detailed information on the new subscription, which is available for enterprises. The Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat serves as a “lite” version of the existing Copilot plan, featuring a more flexible payment structure and a reduced number of AI functionalities. The conventional Copilot subscription is priced at $30 per user per month, roughly equivalent to Rs. 2,600.
This new subscription tier appears to be a strategic effort to attract larger businesses that remain cautious about utilizing AI technologies and prefer to avoid heavy expenditures for extensive employee coverage. The Copilot Chat option enables these companies to experiment with the features and assess their suitability. Moreover, the pay-as-you-go model allows businesses to track their usage and integrate the tool into relevant tasks only when needed.
Difference between Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions
Photo Credit: Microsoft
As part of the subscription, Microsoft is also offering free access to the Copilot Chat for enterprises. However, there are limitations: the AI chatbot is exclusively web-based, meaning it only generates responses validated by information found online and does not provide access to work-grounded data, which would include Microsoft Graph and third-party data through Graph connectors.
This new offering marks the second AI agent subscription from Microsoft. While the 365 Copilot plan has a metered payment option for agents undertaking autonomous tasks, the Copilot Chat subscription charges even for actions based on work data.
In a recent interview with Technology News, Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer for AI at Work, elaborated on the potential costs associated with using AI agents.
Microsoft quantifies AI agent usage in terms of “messages,” which represent the responses generated by the agents. However, it remains unclear whether the complexity or formatting of the responses affects pricing. According to Spataro, each message translates to a cost of one cent, or approximately Rs. 0.86.
Using the AI chat for responses based solely on online references incurs no message costs, while standard responses will cost one message each. If the Copilot generates a response autonomously, that will cost businesses two messages. Obtaining answers from Microsoft Graph data is priced at 30 messages, and performing autonomous actions incurs a fee of 25 messages per action.
For instance, if a company utilizes Copilot Chat to generate 5,000 responses, look up 3,000 messages for company policies, and execute 4,000 automation tasks within a month, the total cost would be around $2,000, or approximately Rs. 1,72,950. These figures represent a moderate usage scenario for a medium-sized enterprise with 100 to 1,000 employees.
