(Reuters) – Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it will be implementing a price increase of at least 53% for its new artificial intelligence features in Microsoft Office. The company aims to capitalize on the potential profits from this technology. Additionally, Microsoft is making a more secure version of its Bing search engine available immediately to businesses. This is an effort to address data-protection concerns, increase interest in AI, and compete with Google.
During the virtual Inspire conference, Microsoft revealed that customers will be required to pay $30 per user, per month for the AI copilot in Microsoft 365. This copilot promises to draft emails in Outlook, create documents in Word, and provide easy access to all employee data through a chatbot. The upgrade will be an additional cost for customers on top of their existing monthly plans, potentially tripling costs for some.
Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft, believes that the tool will prove to be cost-effective in the long run due to time savings and increased productivity. The copilot can summarize Teams calls, eliminating the need for note-taking and reducing meeting attendance. Spataro declined to provide a revenue forecast for the copilot, but it has already been tested by at least 600 enterprises since its launch in March.
While the copilot is not yet generally available, Microsoft is directing businesses towards Bing Chat Enterprise. This bot can generate content and make sense of online information. The enterprise version of Bing will not allow user data to be viewed or saved for the purpose of training underlying technology, ensuring data protection. Users will have to log in with their work credentials to access these protections.
The release of the enterprise version of Bing comes in response to concerns within the industry about employees inputting confidential information into public chatbots, leaving it vulnerable to human reviewers or potential replication by AI. When asked about the level of protection for Bing users thus far, Spataro emphasized that Microsoft has always been clear about its privacy policies and is eager to bring AI to consumers. The company also announced an update that allows users to upload images and search for related content, similar to Google’s capabilities.
Microsoft’s push for Bing in the corporate sphere may be instrumental in its quest to gain search advertising share from Google, which currently generates $2 billion in revenue per percentage point gain. Furthermore, it could attract customers to upgrade to Microsoft 365 Copilot. This AI upgrade offers access to business data and compliance controls. Spataro described this move as “a very strategic move for us”.
Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, California; Editing by Stephen Coates
Credit: The Star : Tech Feed
