Microsoft has launched its first paid subscription tier for its AI chatbot, Microsoft Copilot. The AI bot, formerly known as Bing Chat, still has a free plan but will offer new premium features with the premium plan. Microsoft Copilot Pro will enable AI functionality in Microsoft 365 Office apps, namely Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with new features still to be announced.
What is Copilot Pro?
Copilot Pro is the new premium subscription for the Microsoft Copilot AI chatbot.
It will unlock advanced features and functionality specially designed for MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Copilot Pro will unlock AI-powered functionality in office apps across Mac, Windows, and iPad devices. With the Windows giant’s secure hold of the corporate document software market, we can expect this to swiftly become an unignorable USP for thousands of businesses worldwide. The new Copilot plan will enable priority access to new OpenAI models, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT itself.
The features and benefits of the Copilot Pro plan are sure to be similar to those of ChatGPT Plus, in comparison to the free version of ChatGPT.
Comparison to Google Bard Advanced vs ChatGPT Plus
The most obvious comparison to be made here is Microsoft Copilot Pro vs ChatGPT Plus vs Bard Advanced.
Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI each have their own AI assistant. Each of these three tech giants is battling for market share, of course, but with Microsoft and OpenAI working in tandem, Google is in trouble. For the past decade, Google Search has been the undisputed source of search traffic across the globe (aside from China, which has its own search engine called Baidu). The partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft poses the biggest threat to Google in a very long time.
Google does plan to introduce a paid plan to its AI chatbot. The Google Bard Advanced pricing will undoubtedly be similar, if not identical, to the pricing of Microsoft and OpenAI.
Does Copilot still have a free plan?
Yes, Microsoft Copilot still has a free plan. The free version will be free forever. Those who choose to upgrade will have exclusive access to features that cost Microsoft more to run, but many users will be satisfied with the free version of Copilot.
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How much does the Copilot Pro plan cost?
A subscription to Copilot Pro costs $20/month. This is the same price as ChatGPT Plus.
There are additional parallels between the two services, in that Microsoft Copilot uses GPT-4, the same foundation model that ChatGPT uses. This includes the GPT-4V variant, which allows visual multimodality. With GPT-4V, ChatGPT and Copilot alike can recognize subjects in images, and generate AI images from text prompts.
