Microsoft is launching Copilot Chat, a free version of its AI assistant, alongside a new pay-as-you-go system for AI agents.
At its core, Copilot Chat is Microsoft's way of offering businesses a free ChatGPT-like service, powered by OpenAI's technology. Users can upload documents to handle common office tasks - summarizing Word documents, analyzing Excel spreadsheets, and suggesting improvements to PowerPoint presentations. It also generates images for marketing and social media, all powered by OpenAI's models.
Copilot Chat serves as the basic version, while Microsoft 365 Copilot remains the premium offering at $30 per user monthly. This complete version includes additional features like direct integration with Office apps and access to company emails, meetings, and chats. Current Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers can use both standard and AI-generated responses, plus company data queries ("tenant Graph grounding"), without extra charges.
Both versions of Copilot include Microsoft's "agents" feature, which lets employees create specialized AI assistants using plain language. Similar to OpenAI's CustomGPTs, these agents can access company data from platforms like SharePoint and follow specific instructions.
For example, sales teams can use an agent to pull up customer details before meetings, while maintenance staff can quickly access repair guides. While agents can't perform specific actions in Copilot Chat yet, Microsoft plans to roll out this feature as a paid preview in February 2025 through Copilot Studio.
Message-based billing system
Microsoft charges for agent services based on "messages," offering two payment options: pay-as-you-go at $0.01 per message or bulk packages of 25,000 messages for $200 monthly. The pricing has four tiers: basic responses (1 message), AI-generated responses (2 messages), tenant Graph grounding for messages (30 messages), and autonomous actions (25 messages).
To put these costs in perspective, Microsoft estimates that a typical customer service agent handling website queries would cost about $45 daily for 500 basic and 2,000 AI-generated responses. An HR agent processing 200 generative answers and 200 tenant Graph grounding queries would cost 6,400 messages ($64) daily. A sales order autonomous agent handling 100 generative answers, 100 tenant Graph groundings, and 800 autonomous actions would cost 23,200 messages ($232) per day.
Users can access Copilot Chat through m365copilot.com or through apps for Windows, Android, and iPhone. Companies manage their agents and track costs through the Microsoft Power Platform Admin Center, where administrators can set up environments, monitor usage, and control message allowances.
