Microsoft wants consumers and small businesses to use its AI tools, too

Microsoft wants everybody to tap its AI for help with writing documents and emails.

The tech giant first rolled out its Copilot tool to big enterprises last November, and now it’s offering a $20-per-month subscription called Copilot Pro for consumers who already subscribe to its 365 suite of productivity software.

The company also announced a new deal for small businesses to purchase up to 299 licenses for $30 per person per month, removing a previous minimum requirement of 300 licenses to make the service more accessible to small and medium businesses.

The new offerings allow Microsoft to further weave tools based on large language models (LLMs) into Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, making the generative tech from partner OpenAI available to consumers and commercial customers of all stripes.

It’s not the only enterprise software company attempting to make LLMs ubiquitous in the workplace; other AI copilot software offerings including Google Bard for Workspace and Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot.

Microsoft’s GM of search and AI marketing, Divya Kumar, told Tech Brew that the decision to remove the minimum license limit came from feedback from smaller businesses. Small companies have reported in at least one survey that they’re increasingly turning to generative AI amid staffing shortages. “The enormous feedback we got was just to make it more widely available,” Kumar said.

As for how Copilot’s existing customers are finding it most useful, Kumar said summarizing complex text is one of the most popular applications.

“If I had to take one of the top use cases, it’s summary. It’s helping people make content more digestible,” Kumar said.

Forrester Research analyst J.P. Gownder said Microsoft could have a more difficult time pitching consumers on the usefulness of tools like this, however. While Copilot can help businesses navigate large repositories of internal information, consumers don’t really have an equivalent need.

“What will be challenging for Microsoft is communicating that Copilot for Microsoft 365 in an enterprise environment is inherently more valuable than a consumer license, because it takes advantage of all the internal enterprise knowledge about users, who they interact with, and the documents they use,” Gownder told Tech Brew in an email. “For individuals, it can still be a useful tool, but simply leverages a much more limited amount of contextual data.”

Still, Gownder said the rollout is an important step toward introducing more people to Microsoft’s generative AI tech as a work tool.

“Altogether, Microsoft’s expansion is a welcome addition to its strategy,” Gownder said. “Keeping Copilot for Microsoft 365 a niche, elite product would risk losing out to competitors in the broader market. Now, those who want to integrate generative AI into their daily workflows have options to do so with Copilot, whether or not they work for a large enterprise.”