Microsoft is launching Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a repackaged version of the free AI-chatbot Copilot. The new version comes with ‘AI agents’ billed on a per-use basis.
In practice, this is a rebranding of Bing Chat Enterprise, subsequently renamed Copilot. This chatbot is Microsoft’s version of an AI model designed to rival, say, Google’s ChatGPT or Gemini. The most important addition of the new version concerns the AI agents in the chat itself (previously accessible only if you took out a Copilot subscription).
Such an agent may be assigned specific tasks, such as managing your inbox or automating tasks. In Copilot Studio, you will be able to create and use new agents that you can operate on web data as well as on your own data. Even though chats with the GPT model are free, you will have to pay for these agents, but depending on usage. This usage is then measured in the number of messages you send/resend with the Copilot agent.
The new Copilot Chat is therefore in principle a stripped-down version of Microsoft 365 Copilot and appears to be partly intended to get organizations and their employees acquainted with Microsoft’s artificial intelligence. Microsoft also hopes to convince them to sign up for a real subscription, although at thirty dollars per month per user, that currently seems too expensive for many organizations. Such a comprehensive Copilot includes, among other things, predefined ‘agents’ and allows you to apply all kinds of AI functionalities in different 365 programs, such as Teams, Outlook and others.
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