Microsoft’s new corporate AI products will come with a hefty price tag

MICROSOFT said new corporate artificial intelligence tools that work with Office software, called Microsoft 365 Copilot, will cost US$30 per user per month on top of what most business customers already pay.

Microsoft has been testing Microsoft 365 Copilot, which uses data from the Internet as well as a company’s own internal information, with about 600 customers, including General Motors and Goodyear. Copilot will be offered for subscription plans that currently range in price from US$12.50 to US$57 a user each month. Microsoft didn’t say when Copilot, which is based on technology from artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, will be broadly available.

The pricing announced on Tuesday (Jul 18) at Microsoft’s partners conference, reflects strong demand for corporate AI products and the cost of running them. Microsoft cloud and AI chief Scott Guthrie told Bloomberg Businessweek in May that his inbox has been inundated with CEOs asking for access. Microsoft’s chief financial officer Amy Hood has said the company’s new AI products will become the software company’s fastest business to hit US$10 billion. Still, these kinds of services require expensive computer chips and intense cloud-computing power to do things like answer questions, analyse spreadsheets, generate slide shows and predict future business issues.

The company on Tuesday also previewed a more confidential Bing search engine chat for corporate customers that is included in various versions of Microsoft 365 for business and will be offered as a stand-alone subscription for others at US$5 per user, per month. The enterprise version protects private corporate data so that companies can let employees put in confidential information.

The company is also rolling out previously announced visual search features in Bing Chat, which let users upload images and ask questions about them or search for related information. BLOOMBERG