Microsoft has raised the stakes in the rapidly evolving AI arena by announcing the introduction of Copilot Pro, which promises to enrich the existing collaboration suite with deeper integrations, personalized assistance, and the exciting capacity to retain knowledge across various platforms. For the pioneering prompt engineers and AI enthusiasts keen on optimizing their workflows, this is a development that is worth exploring.
Copilot PRO announcement
Copilot Pro Introduction:
- Launch: Microsoft has introduced Copilot Pro, a premium subscription service aimed at enhancing AI capabilities for individual users.
- Features:
- Unified AI Experience: Copilot Pro offers a seamless AI experience across various devices, integrating with users' context on the web, PCs, apps, and soon on mobile phones.
- Microsoft 365 Integration: It grants access to Copilot in Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, available for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers on PC, Mac, and iPad.
- Advanced Models Access: Subscribers get priority access to the latest AI models, including OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo, allowing for enhanced performance and model optimization.
- Enhanced AI Image Creation: The service includes improved AI image creation features with Image Creator from Designer, offering faster performance and better image quality.
- Custom Copilot GPT Builder: A forthcoming feature allowing users to create customized Copilot GPTs tailored to specific topics.
- Pricing: Available at $20 per month per user.
Expanding Copilot for Microsoft 365:
- Accessibility: Previously available for large enterprises, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now open to businesses of all sizes, including small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Features:
- Integration with Work Data: It works across an organization's data, including emails, meetings, chats, and documents, and integrates with Microsoft Teams.
- AI-Assisted Functions: Copilot in Microsoft 365 aids in creating documents, analyzing data, designing presentations, managing emails, and summarizing meetings.
- Security and Compliance: Ensures enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance.
- Pricing: $30 per person per month for small businesses with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard, with no seat minimum requirement.
Additional Announcements:
- Copilot for Sales and Service: Newly introduced specialized versions of Copilot for sales and customer service applications.
- Copilot Studio: A low-code tool for customizing Copilot for Microsoft 365, allowing users to create standalone copilots and custom GPTs, integrate with various data sources, and manage customizations.
- Copilot in Microsoft Teams: Enhanced features for Copilot in Teams meetings, including note-taking, content capture, intelligent recap, and integration with Microsoft Whiteboard.
Conclusion
Microsoft's latest announcements signify a significant leap in AI integration within its ecosystem. Copilot Pro offers advanced AI capabilities for individual users, while the expansion of Copilot for Microsoft 365 democratizes AI tools for businesses of all sizes. This strategic move positions Microsoft at the forefront of AI-enhanced productivity, potentially reshaping how individuals and organizations interact with technology in their daily workflows.
The interesting point will be around the possibility of maintaining the knowledge across conversations in different apps and chats for the same account. It feels similar to an unreleased Personalisation feature on Chat GPT.
Besides that, it will also allow you to build custom copilots and some other perks. It is unclear if there will be a Copilot store yet but I would rather expect them to build a shared ecosystem with OpenAI.
Interesting that this was announced ahead of the solution which Google is cooking (upcoming bots). Potentially Google would still be able to gain a big portion of the market share by offering the same set of features for free as a part of their ecosystem.
None of these were released yet, except the Copilot mobile app mentioned in the blog post.
