Dive Brief:
- Microsoft 365 Copilot, the company's generative AI-fueled productivity tool, will be priced at $30 per user, per month, the company announced Tuesday during its annual partner conference.
- The software provider did not immediately disclose when the tool would be available broadly for enterprise users, but said it would provide more information on timing "in the coming months," according to a blog post.
- Microsoft also announced its Bing Chat Enterprise service, an AI-powered organizational chat with security features, which rolled out under preview mode Tuesday. The new solution will be included for free in certain business- and enterprise-grade Microsoft 365 bundles.
Dive Insight:
Microsoft has been persistently infusing its suite of enterprise products with generative AI capabilities.
From its CRM platform Dynamics 365 to its 365 productivity suite, as well as inside cloud platform Azure, generative AI has been an overarching theme for the company since late last year.
The promise is more efficiency. But one pushback from customers has been the potential risk, as generative AI use relies on company data to produce valuable insights and outcomes.
Microsoft explicitly addressed those concerns in its rollout of Bing Chat Enterprise.
"With Bing Chat Enterprise, user and business data are protected and will not leak outside the organization," the company said in a blog post. "What goes in — and comes out — remains protected.”
Chat data won't be saved by Microsoft, according to the post. It also won't be used for model training.
The pricing update to Microsoft 365 Copilot comes as IT leaders contend with another hurdle in the path to generative AI: cost.
Two in 3 IT pros said their companies expected to spend more on emerging technologies this year, Forrester data shows. But questions remain for AI's return on investment.
In addition to cost and data privacy concerns, executives grapple with having enough tech talent to leverage the advantages of generative AI while also upgrading the underlying technology ecosystem.
