Microsoft is opening the door for all businesses to access its AI-powered Office features. Microsoft's 365 Copilot was launched in November, initially requiring enterprise customers to commit to at least 300 users and make a phone call to be included in the list. This meant an additional cost of at least $9,000 for businesses. However, now Microsoft's AI assistant is widely available to all small, medium, and large enterprises without a minimum user requirement.

Divya Kumar, Microsoft's Global Marketing Manager for Search and AI, said in an interview, "Given the demand and interest we've heard from small and medium-sized businesses, we have removed the requirement of 300 seats." As a result, businesses of all sizes can now choose the $30 option and enable Copilot in Microsoft 365.

Revoking the requirement to purchase 300 seats is a significant change, but Microsoft has also removed the requirement for Microsoft 365 plans, opening up Copilot in Office applications to Office 365 E3 and E5 customers. Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium subscribers can also purchase Copilot for $30 per user per month.

The current version of Microsoft 365's Copilot still requires a higher entry price, but it feels more like the release we originally expected. The November release was more like a pre-order event, as most businesses couldn't immediately access it, with only the largest enterprise users gaining access to the collaboration partner.

Microsoft promises that Copilot in Office applications will change the way documents are created and edited. Copilot, powered by OpenAI's GPT-4, will appear as a chatbot in the sidebar, following Microsoft 365 applications like an assistant. It can also make inline calls, allowing users to generate text within documents, create PowerPoint presentations based on Word documents, and even assist with PivotTable functions in Excel.

Copilot can also be used in Teams, making it an ideal choice if you want to summarize meetings you haven't attended or ones you were late to. Email threads in Outlook can also be summarized, and collaborators can create draft email responses with various tones or lengths.

Microsoft now has three different versions of Copilot. There is the regular Copilot, which is available for free to consumers and businesses and essentially functions as a chatbot, similar to ChatGPT. Then there is the new Copilot Pro option, which was launched today at a premium of $20 per month, offering AI-driven Copilot features in Office applications and elsewhere. Microsoft also offers Copilot for Microsoft 365 as an advanced subscription for businesses, with additional features, priced at $30 per user per month.