Dive Brief:
- Microsoft plans to bring users the ability to customize the company’s generative AI assistant, Copilot, the tech giant announced Monday.
- Some of the customized versions of Copilot, called Copilot GPTs, rolled out Monday. Each Copilot GPT is tailored to a specific purpose, such as fitness, travel or business.
- With Microsoft’s new individual subscription plan, Copilot Pro, users create Copilot GPTs via Copilot GPT Builder once the platform is available. Copilot Pro will cost $20 per user, per month. Microsoft told CIO Dive the Copilot GPT Builder will be aimed at individuals to create and publish GPTs, while Copilot Studio serves as the enterprise low-code solution.
Dive Insight:
The arrival of Copilot GPTs comes on the heels of OpenAI’s anticipated launch of its GPT store, which will allow customers to search through customized, task-focused versions of their technology previously vetted by the company.
As partners, OpenAI and Microsoft have taken turns announcing the latest AI upgrades to their technology and products, often with OpenAI taking the lead.
“What [Microsoft] is doing is taking what OpenAI has pioneered and putting it into Copilot,” Jason Wong, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, told CIO Dive. “Microsoft is taking more of an enterprise-focused approach as opposed to trying to attract these long tails of developers.”
Wong sees the addition of Copilot GPTs as mainly benefiting citizen developer ecosystems within enterprises. Citizen developers are non-technical employees who are capable of leveraging technology tools to enhance user experiences or boost productivity.
“It’s kind of how organizations are today allowing end users to use tools to automate, build their own forms or build their own bots for workflows,” Wong said. “It could expand into more complex workflows over time if they are widely adopted or if users find them helpful, and that’s where we get into more formal business technologists and fusion team activities.”
Copilot GPTs are not yet generally available, despite a handful launching Monday. Microsoft told users to stay tuned for more details on the tools “as we get closer to availability,” in a blog post.
Microsoft also announced the general availability of Copilot for Microsoft 365 for small businesses and removed the 300-seat purchase minimum, making Copilot available for Office 365 E3 and E5 customers.
“Prior to yesterday, Microsoft’s Copilot for Microsoft 365 had a fairly high hurdle in terms of cost, which made it accessible only for very large companies,” Vadim Vladimirskiy, CEO at Nerdio, said. “I think it’s going to increase adoption pretty dramatically.”
The Microsoft-OpenAI partnership has drawn scrutiny from regulators, most recently from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority in December. The agency’s invitation to comment closed earlier this month as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the partnership constitutes a relevant merger situation.
