Bing Chat Enterprise goes live for Microsoft 365 education faculty users

Microsoft rebrands chatbot to boost AI adoption in the workplace

Copilot Chat customers also lack the customisation options accessible to Microsoft 365 Copilot members, as well as Microsoft’s recently released Copilot Analytics tool for measuring company-wide AI usage. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Launched made the IT titan reveal specifics about the new subscription package, which is currently available to corporations. The new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is effectively a “lite” version of the current Copilot plan, with a more flexible payment method and less AI features. Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft’s massive enterprise AI add-on for Microsoft 365, included all of these capabilities. Notably, these figures represent moderate usage for a medium-sized business (100–1,000 employees).

The chatbot, which is free to all buyers of Microsoft’s main workplace software bundle, can synthesise data pulled from the web, analyse documents and suggest replies to customer service calls, among other things. But the assistant has taken a back seat to other Copilots embedded in individual productivity apps like Word and Excel, according to Jared Spataro, who oversees Microsoft’s workplace AI tools. Copilot Chat users can utilize the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to run “agents” that automate simple tasks such as providing account information before a sales meeting or delivering directions to a field service person. IT administrators can create and manage org-wide agents, as well as control access and security for individual agents. For example, a request for a custom answer from the agent’s underlying large language model will cost $0.02 while tapping into Microsoft app data will cost $0.30. Like the previous business and enterprise customers, this version of Bing Chat for educators includes extra security so that any information will not leak outside the organization.

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If the Copilot is required to respond, firms will incur a fee of two messages. Furthermore, generating a response utilizing Microsoft Graph data will cost 30 messages, and autonomous actions (in which the agent conducts executable actions) would cost 25 messages each. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is just the company’s second subscription that includes access to AI bots. While 365 Copilot provides a metered payment option for agents executing autonomous activities, the Copilot Chat subscription charges for all work data-based actions. The assistant, which can be accessed in a web browser or smartphone app, has some limitations. It can’t transcribe a Microsoft Teams conference call or prioritise unread messages in an e-mail inbox.

Those tasks and others that tap into Microsoft’s ubiquitous workplace applications require a subscription to Microsoft 365 Copilot, which costs users US$30/month. But Spataro said Microsoft was beefing up the capabilities of the chat-window-based Copilot, including letting users access agents, autonomous bots programmed to perform specific tasks like fetching customer account details or technical specs. The Copilot Chat plan misses several of the features of Microsoft 365 Copilot, such as prebuilt agents and AI-powered capabilities for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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Any chat data is also not saved, and its information won’t be used to train the AI models. It was an extension of its Bing Chat AI chatbot made for businesses with more secure features. Today, Microsoft announced it is expanding Bing Chat Enterprise to more customers, specifically those in the education field. According to Business Insider, Copilot, which Microsoft claims is utilized by nearly 70% of Fortune 500 businesses, is proving ineffective, expensive, and insecure for many enterprises. According to a recent Gartner survey, only 3.3% of IT leaders believe that Copilot has given considerable value to their companies.

TechBooky is a social Tech blog with a special focus on the budding African Technology sector. Copilot Chat’s functionalities are now available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which is a rebranded version of the Microsoft 365 app. Unless IT admins for those plans decide to opt out, Bing Chat Enterprise will be turned on by default for all Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 educator customers on or after September 21. Students will continue to use the standard Bing Chat for their work with their personal Microsoft accounts.

In a blog post, Microsoft announced that Bing Chat Enterprise is available as a public preview at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 customers who are educational faculty members, staff, and researchers. It did not divulge much more; we have contacted the company for specific pricing information and will update this piece if we receive a response. In a discussion with The Verge, Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s CMO of AI at Work, detailed how much businesses will have to spend to use AI bots. Microsoft Copilot will become Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, the company said on Wednesday, the second rebranding since the AI assistant debuted in 2023 as Bing Chat Enterprise.

Microsoft is now including free access to Copilot chat for corporations with the subscription. Microsoft’s new subscription tier looks to be a smart move to persuade major enterprises that are still wary of these AI services and do not want to pay a high fee for thousands of employees. Instead, they can use the Copilot Chat to try the features and determine if they are a good fit. Businesses using the pay-as-you-go plan can also monitor their consumption and only utilize the service for important tasks. The pricing appears to undercut Salesforce, which is pushing its own set of agents that the company says will initially cost about $2 per conversation. ServiceNow, Workday, HubSpot and SAP are also among the cadre of software companies now emphasising AI bots capable of fetching information and taking actions on a user’s behalf.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new enterprise-focused subscription service with support for artificial intelligence (AI) agents, was released on Wednesday. The Redmond-based software giant has aggressively marketed its Copilot subscription to businesses and consumers. The new subscription allows for more flexible access to the company’s AI services by replacing fixed subscription rates with a pay-as-you-go basis. Using the AI chat for web-based responses costs no messages (free service), whereas traditional answers cost one message.

Users can use the app to ask Copilot, Microsoft’s chatbot experience built on top of GPT-4o, to summarise key points in an uploaded file, produce a work document, or build an AI image. Alternatively, they can work on a project with coworkers and AI using the built-in Copilot Pages tool. Microsoft is releasing a pay-as-you-go package for business clients that includes some but not all of the company’s existing AI-powered productivity capabilities for Microsoft 365. Microsoft is renaming its main chatbot for businesses, ramping up efforts to persuade people to use the software maker’s closest rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It appears like Copilot Chat is Microsoft’s attempt to persuade holdouts to purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot by dangling metered agentic functionalities, while also taking incremental fees from customers with less demanding AI requirements.