Microsoft joined the artificial intelligence bandwagon with Copilot in 2023, using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to power its AI companion. To further improve its AI offering, the company has unveiled Copilot Pro, a paid tier of its AI bot. Read below to learn how Copilot differs from Copilot Pro and what benefits the latter packs.
What Is Microsoft Copilot Pro?
Microsoft Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat, is based on Microsoft’s Prometheus model, which is based on ChatGPT’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM). The “everyday AI companion” was rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 11 in September 2023. It improves your Windows 11 experience with AI features to organize windows, capture screenshots, get relevant answers, and generate images from your ideas.
With Copilot, you can create content, write codes, ask general questions, or create images by writing natural language prompts. In short, you get access to its foundational capabilities, web grounding, and commercial data protection at no extra cost. Moreover, this free tier gives you access to OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo models during non-peak hours, ensuring you get precise replies for your interactions.
Copilot is free to use and is available on Windows 11, Bing, and Microsoft Edge.
Copilot Pro, a new subscription service designed specifically for power users and creators, takes the Copilot experience to the next level. Besides basic benefits, it integrates with Microsoft’s Office apps and provides priority access to the latest OpenAI model to boost your productivity further. This guarantees faster performance even during peak hours, unlike the free tier.
Additionally, pro users can generate faster images with DALL-E 3 with more daily boosts. You can use ChatGPT to create images as well, so don’t subscribe to Copilot Pro for this reason alone.
With Copilot Pro, you can access Microsoft’s AI chatbot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote to write, code, organize, and design content swiftly. Further, you get exclusive access to the GPT builder for creating Copilot GPTs for specific topics as per your requirements.
Microsoft Copilot vs Copilot Pro: How Are They Different?
The key difference between Copilot and Copilot Pro lies in their features. The free version is only available on Windows 11, Microsoft Edge, and Bing and offers basic AI capabilities with data protection. With Copilot Pro, you get AI integration in various Microsoft apps, including Word and Excel, faster image generation with DALL-E 3, and priority access to OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo models, irrespective of the time. This guarantees a better understanding of complex problems and accelerated performance to generate results quickly. During peak hours, Copilot free drops to GPT 3.5 instead of using the latest model.
When creating AI images with Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator) using DALL-E 3, pro subscribers can create pictures in landscape orientation with 100 boosts per day instead of 15 boosts in the free plan.
Copilot Pro in Word enables you to generate text inside new or existing documents based on your requirements. Additionally, there’s a Chat mode where you can ask questions related to the data in the Word document, formatting, or suggestions. In Excel, you can use Copilot Pro to analyze data, view correlations, generate formula suggestions, and more.
Like in Word, Copilot Pro can help you generate PowerPoint presentations based on the data present in your document. It can also help you fill in missing slides in your existing presentation.
With Copilot Pro in Outlook, you can create plans, organize information, draft emails in different tones, summarize long emails, and more.
Once you subscribe to Copilot Pro, you can use it across all Microsoft apps on PC, Mac, and iPad.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 vs. Copilot Pro: Is It Any Different?
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an enterprise product that aims to provide organizations with a prioritized Copilot experience and enterprise-grade data protection. With Copilot for Microsoft 365, you can use AI in your emails, meetings, chats, documents, and much more across all your Microsoft 365 work apps and Microsoft Graph. Unlike Pro, the enterprise subscription gives you access to Microsoft Teams so you can use AI during a meeting to summarize key discussions and action points.
Additionally, Copilot for Microsoft 365 includes Copilot Studio for organizations to build their custom Copilot and plugins as per their requirements. However, a Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium license is mandatory to subscribe to Copilot for Microsoft 365.
As for pricing, Microsoft offers its monthly subscription at $30 for each member in your organization, provided they’ve already purchased a business license product for Microsoft 365, starting at $12.50 member/month. In the case of an enterprise, you must purchase the Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 subscription that starts at $36 per member/month on top of the Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription.
Copilot for personal users (with Windows and standard search tools) is free, whereas Copilot Pro, with its advanced features and AI integration across select Microsoft apps, requires a monthly subscription of $20 per user. To get the Pro plan, you must have a Microsoft 365 Personal ($6.99/month) or Family ($9.99/month) subscription. This means you are paying a minimum of $26.99/month to enjoy Microsoft 365 and Copilot Pro, which is expensive.
You should use Copilot Pro with a Microsoft 365 Family subscription, as it provides better value. While you will pay $29.99 a month (combined) for the subscription, you can share it with five other people (a total of six), bringing down the cost to $5/month per member.
Final Verdict
Be it an individual, business, or enterprise, Copilot is a solid AI offering with far-reaching benefits. However, Copilot’s Pro and Enterprise subscription only makes sense if you rely heavily on using Microsoft 365 apps for work and data.
Otherwise, you can always use ChatGPT and pair it with Copilot’s free benefits on Windows 11 to enjoy the best of both worlds without spending a penny.
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