In an effort to get more customers to use its AI chat interface, Microsoft has included Copilot in the latest version of its subscription service along with an increased fee, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
As the battle for AI dominance rages in the tech world, Microsoft has floated a new approach to test its generative AI service, forcing it upon subscribers with an increased monthly fee.
Microsoft made Copilot available for purchase last year, but now the company has opted to force it upon subscribers in some markets.
Microsoft recently added Copilot to its 365 subscription service which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint in Australia and several other Southeast Asian Countries. The company then simultaneously raised the price of its service.
Copilot is a conversational chat interface that lets the user search for specific information, create text such like emails and summaries of previously created documents and create images based on text prompts.
YouTube content creator Alistair Fleming described Copilot as an unwanted assistant that desperately wants to help with his writing, while he watched his subscription fee increase by $5 Australian dollars a month.
"It was very keen to be used, and this was irritating to me as a user," said Fleming, noting how the CoPilot icon would pop up consistently while he was writing scripts.
Tech giants are racing to established dominance in the AI marketplace with OpenAI’s ChatGPT being an early leader and Meta AI, Google’s Gemini and Zapier Central, among others, all seeking to establish a loyal user base of their own.
According to Sensor Tower, Copilot was downloaded 37 million times from May 2023 though mid-December compared to 433 million downloads for ChatGPT.
Chatbots are critical to the company's development of its AI business with Microsoft citing a $10 billion revenue from its AI products this year alone.
Yet user blowback on community sites could prompt many to dismiss the subscription altogether. When Fleming tried to remove the AI features with his 365 service he realized this was not allowed so he canceled his subscription and now uses Google.
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