Microsoft rolled out its AI-powered Office features for businesses in November, and now, just two months later, they’re extending the offer to consumers. They’re launching Copilot Pro today as a $20 monthly subscription, giving users access to AI-powered features within Office apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Subscribers also get priority access to the latest OpenAI models and the ability to create their own Copilot GPT.
If you’re already rocking a Microsoft 365 Personal or Home subscription, tossing in an extra $20 per month (per person) will instantly open up Copilot in Office apps on Mac, Windows, and iPad. With this, you can do cool stuff like create entire PowerPoint slide decks by just chatting with it, and in Word, you get inline Copilot experiences to tweak paragraphs, generate text, and summarize documents.
Copilot is making its way to Outlook.com, where it’ll assist you in crafting replies to emails or even whip up brand new ones. Plus, there’s a preview version in Excel that lets you dive into data analysis, create graphs, and handle a bunch of other tasks.
Consumers will get access to most of the features that businesses have enjoyed for the past couple of months, but there’s one major exception. You won’t be able to call on Copilot to whip up a PowerPoint deck based on a Word document just yet. That’s because the consumer version doesn’t run on Microsoft’s Graph technology, which means this functionality isn’t available at the moment.
Apart from getting cozy with Office, Copilot Pro throws in some extras. You’ll score access to the newest OpenAI models, enhancements to the Image Creator (formerly Bing Image Creator) from Designer, and the nifty option to craft your very own Copilot GPT.
If you’re not already rocking a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can still jump on the Copilot Pro train. By subscribing to Copilot Pro, you snag priority access to GPT-4 Turbo within Copilot. This means faster performance even during peak times, and soon, you’ll be able to switch between models with ease. Plus, if you’re into creating images using OpenAI’s DALL-E models, Copilot Pro is bringing in some upgrades, including a new landscape image format and better overall image quality.
The subscription is also gearing up to roll out a fresh feature called Copilot GPT Builder. It’s your ticket to crafting your very own custom Copilot GPT, much like the one that hit the scene for businesses last year.
“There’s a lot of demand from those power users and they want more rapid access to the latest models, they want faster performance, and they want creativity tools,” says Divya Kumar, global head of marketing for search and AI at Microsoft, in a discussion with The Verge.