Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for Enterprise Launched With Pay-as-You-Go AI Agents

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new enterprise-focused subscription plan that includes support for artificial intelligence (AI) agents, was introduced on Wednesday. The Redmond-based tech giant has been aggressively pushing its Copilot subscription to businesses and individuals. The new subscription offers more flexible access to the company's AI services, replacing fixed subscription fees with a pay-as-you-go model. The plan also includes access to Microsoft's free Copilot Chat for businesses.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Introduced

The tech giant shared details of the new subscription plan, which is now available to enterprises. The new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is effectively a "lite" version of the existing Copilot plan, and offers a flexible payment system and fewer AI features. The latter costs $30 (roughly Rs. 2,600) a month per person.

Microsoft's new subscription tier appears to be a strategic move to convince large businesses who are still apprehensive of these AI services and do not want to pay a hefty amount for thousands of employees. The Copilot Chat, instead, allows them to test the features and see if it is a good fit. With the pay-as-you-go plan, businesses can also monitor their usage and only use the tool for relevant tasks.

Difference between Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions
Photo Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft is also bundling free access to Copilot chat for enterprises with the subscription. However, the AI chatbot is only grounded in the web (meaning it does not generate responses that it has not verified with a website), and it does not offer work groundedness (allowing the chatbot to access Microsoft Graph and third-party data via Graph connectors).

The Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is only the second subscription by the company that offers access to AI agents. While the 365 Copilot also offers a metered payment option for agents performing autonomous actions, in the Copilot Chat subscription, even the work data-based actions are chargeable.

In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft's CMO of AI at Work, Jared Spataro, explained what businesses will really have to pay for using AI agents.

Microsoft uses “messages” as the unit of AI agent usage. Messages are essentially responses generated by the agent. However, there is no clarity on if the length of the response or special formatting adds to the cost. Spataro told the publication that one message is equal to one cent (roughly Rs. 0.86).

Using the AI chat for web-grounded responses costs zero messages (free service) whereas typical answers cost one message. If the Copilot has to generate a response, it will cost businesses two messages. Further, generating a response using data from Microsoft Graph will cost 30 messages and autonomous actions (where the agent performs executable actions) are priced at 25 messages per action.

To offer a hypothetical real-world scenario, if a business uses Copilot Chat to generate 5000 responses related to work, 3000 messages where the AI looks through company policies to find answers, and performs 4000 automation tasks in a month, they would have to pay $2,000 (roughly Rs. 1,72,950). Notably, these numbers would constitute moderate usage for a medium-sized (employees between 100-1,000) enterprise.