Microsoft has begun selling the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI add-on for enterprise Office app subscriptions.
The feature is available in Word, Excel, and other Office programs and costs $30 per person per month.
This is estimated to generate more than $10 billion in annual revenue by 2026, with about 18% of eligible users likely to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to avoid missing out, especially “if there is competition in your industry.” co-pilot program, and if you don't, you're at a disadvantage.
Microsoft is looking to expand its lead in the productivity software market, as Google tries to gain market share by simultaneously selling Duet AI extensions to its subscription-based workspace tools.
“Customers tell us that once they start using Copilot, they can't imagine going without Copilot,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said last week, adding that 40 percent of Fortune 100 companies use Copilot to take advantage of the attractive early access program. The company announced this in May.
In March, Microsoft unveiled its Copilot initiative, and in September it announced that it was targeting large enterprises.
“Most of the conversations we have, even with early access customers, are very short-term,” said Jason Wong, a technology analyst at Gartner. “We can't determine how they use the tools.”
Companies need at least 300 licenses to give their employees access to Copilot. The challenge for Microsoft is to move beyond a small group of users and achieve widespread adoption, which may take some time.
Gartner is encouraging companies to experiment with generative AI, which can generate images and text with just a few words of human intervention.
Companies can often offer Copilot software to highly paid executives because this feature helps them prioritize emails and understand documents quickly.
Microsoft explains that prompts and responses in Copilot are not used to train large language models.