Microsoft is relaunching its Copilot for businesses as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, complete with the ability to use AI agents, in a bid to get more companies to rely on and pay for AI-powered tools. The revamped Copilot Chat is free, secure, and GPT-powered, allowing users to upload files and access AI agents directly within the chat interface.

The new Copilot Chat is a rebranding of what was once Bing Chat Enterprise, which was previously only available in the full Microsoft 365 Copilot experience requiring a $30 per user per month subscription. With this relaunch, Microsoft is making a significant push to get more businesses to adopt AI-powered tools, with the ultimate goal of converting them into paying customers.

According to Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer of AI at work, the new Copilot Chat is designed to best the competition, including ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Spataro highlighted the ability to upload files, making it comparable to the competition, and the inclusion of AI agents, which can work like virtual colleagues, monitoring email inboxes or automating tasks.

The Copilot Chat interface allows users to create and use agents using Copilot Studio, leveraging web data or work data through the Microsoft Graph. The usage of agents will be priced through the Copilot Studio meter in Azure or through a pay-as-you-go option, giving businesses control over their costs. Spataro emphasized that the pricing model is designed to be flexible, with options for pay-as-you-go or consumption packs, allowing businesses to manage their expenses.

The pricing and consumption rates are complex, with Microsoft measuring agent usage in messages. Classic answers that don't hit large language models are priced as one message, whereas generative answers cost two messages, and anything accessing the Microsoft Graph (including files stored in SharePoint) will cost 30 messages. This translates to a cost of 1 cent, 2 cents, or 30 cents per message, respectively.

Microsoft provided an example of how the pricing works, with a hypothetical agent consuming 200 generative answers and 200 tenant Graph grounding messages, resulting in a cost of 6,400 messages or $64 for that day. This level of granularity is intended to give businesses a clear understanding of their costs and help them manage their AI agent usage.

The actual chat experience in Copilot Chat remains largely unchanged, utilizing GPT-4o for queries. Users can upload files to Copilot Chat and have it summarize Word documents or analyze data in Excel spreadsheets. While this functionality is available in the full Microsoft 365 Copilot, Spataro emphasized that Copilot Chat is designed to tempt businesses into paying for the full experience, which integrates AI-powered tools directly within Office apps.

Despite the rebranding and repositioning, Copilot Chat has already gained traction among businesses that rely on Microsoft software and services. Spataro noted that the company has a "remarkable number of users" on the platform, and that once businesses start using it, they become accustomed to and appreciative of the value it can provide at work.

With the ongoing debate over the value of a $30 per user per month subscription to Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft will be hoping that Copilot Chat can help convert more businesses over to its AI way of thinking. By offering a free, secure, and GPT-powered AI chat experience, Microsoft is making a significant push to establish itself as a leader in the AI-powered productivity space.