Microsoft adds Copilot AI features to some non-US M365 consumer plans

Microsoft is bundling its Copilot generative AI (genAI) assistant with consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions in several countries, the company announced last week. 

Copilot Pro will be included in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions in Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand, the company said in a statement first spotted by ZDNet. It means users will gain access to Copilot features in apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Designer — Microsoft’s text-to-image app — is also included.

Microsoft will also increase the cost of the subscription — prices will vary in each country — though this will be less than the cost of a separate Copilot Pro subscription. Australian customers, for example, will pay an additional $4 AUD a month for M365 Family subscriptions, and an extra $5 AUD for M365 Personal subscriptions, according to The Verge. In comparison, Copilot Pro costs $33 AUD per user each month. 

Customers will be limited in how much they use Copilot in apps, however, with a credit system in place. Those who want unrestricted access will need to pay for a Copilot Pro subscription. 

Microsoft didn’t say whether it plans to extend the changes to consumer M365 subscriptions in other regions, but it’s possible the move is a trial run for US and European markets.  

In the US, Copilot Pro costs an extra $20 per user per month for M365 Family and Personal customers. 

“I suspect this is just the first step in [Microsoft] bundling Copilot to a larger audience,” said Jack Gold,founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. “The initial countries are probably a trial deployment to see how it goes, what the most common uses are, and how much they can charge. I’ll bet that in the next [one to two] quarters, you’ll see a much wider rollout to many other countries.”

It’s also possible the Copilot bundling in consumer M365 subscriptions could presage a similar move for business customers, though there’s no mention of such a move on the horizon just yet. 

Microsoft charges an extra $30-per-user-a-month fee to businesses for access to Copilot in Microsoft 365. Despite considerable interest in the M365 Copilot, businesses have been slow to rollout the genAI assistant widely across their organizations, in part due to high costs and a perceived lack of value.

It’s likely this will be the case sooner or later: Analysts at Gartner have said they expect genAI features to be included at no extra cost in office software subscriptions by 2028, according to a recent report (subscription required), as vendors seek broader adoption of their AI tools. 

For Microsoft, this could even mean the addition of a new M365 pricing tier — the long-rumored “E7” — that would include premium features currently available as paid-for add-ons, such as Copilot.