Enterprise customers can use the new Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant starting today. The offering comes however at a premium price and with a minimum of 300 end users. This effectively makes the availability of the AI Assistant a “pre-order” or “soft launch”.
Enterprise customers with an E3 or E5 license can sign up with Microsoft starting today to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant which was introduced earlier this year. The tech giant announces this in a blog.
Also read: Microsoft presents Windows 11 23H2 and arrival Copilot
Limitations
Although this tool for large enterprise customers is now generally available, there is a catch. Enterprise customers with a Microsoft 365 E5 or E3 license must initially call Microsoft to be eligible. In addition, a license for the AI tool costs $30 per user per month with a minimum of 300 users. This will easily cost businesses $9,000 per month this way, and that’s a huge amount of money for a try-out.
Business customers with a Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium subscription cannot use the AI tool yet. Microsoft 365 Monthly Enterprise Channel end users will not get access to the features until December of this year.
Business Microsoft 365 customers dissatisfied
This makes it clear that despite general availability, the features are not yet for everyone with a Microsoft 365 business license. Something many business end users are now objecting to, according to comments on Microsoft forums.
The tech giant does indicate that all existing business end users can use its paid productivity suite Bing Chat Enterprise. That brings business-generative AI functionality to its Bing Chat application.
Features Microsoft 365 Copilot
Among other things, the generative AI-enabled tool should help business customers create and edit Microsoft 365 files in a new and more efficient way.
The AI assistant will allow business end users to summarize documents, draft emails, plan from notes and enhance Excel analysis, among other things.
Much of the expected functionality is still in preview, though. These include the Copilot for Excel, the Copilot for OneNote is only available for Windows, the SharePoint Copilot preview will not be available until this month, and a Copilot preview for OneDrive will not follow until December of this year.