In the early hours of Tuesday Beijing time, Microsoft, the world's top listed company by market value, announced the launch of the Copilot Pro project for individual users. To put it more easily, it means that the commonly used Word, Excel, PowerPoint, as well as the email software Outlook and other "Microsoft Family Buckets" by global workers have officially entered the era of comprehensive AI.
For investors who are concerned about the progress of AI, the AI functionality of Office software is no longer a novelty
In Word and OneNote, users can request Copilot to write their own articles;
In Excel, users can use chat to organize and summarize table information, and AI can easily create charts together;
Through AI, workers can also directly throw a file into PowerPoint and have the software create their own PowerPoint presentation.
In addition, there are also paid privileges such as writing emails and accelerating image generation. Microsoft emphasized on Monday that for the newly launched custom GPT feature in OpenAI, they will also accelerate the release of similar features, allowing users to customize their AI tools with just a few lines of instructions.
In terms of pricing, the Copilot Pro itself is priced at $20 per month, but due to Microsoft's positioning of this feature as an "addition" to the Microsoft 365 subscription plan, users first need to have a 365 subscription - a personal subscription for $69.99 per year, and a home subscription for 6 people for $99.99 per year.
In addition to releasing personal subscriptions, Microsoft also announced on Monday that it will allow small businesses to use Copilot, lifting the previous threshold of "at least 300 subscribers per company," with a fee of $30 per month and a valid 365 subscription service.
Forbes' prophecy looms faintly
With Microsoft launching a paid AI suite for the general public, another issue has also surfaced: the competitive relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.
From many practical use cases, Microsoft's "Worker Family Bucket" and OpenAI's ChatGPT subscription service are almost identical in terms of functions such as word processing, table analysis, image generation, and email writing. Even the underlying model is the same, with the only difference being that ChatGPT needs to be used in the web interface.
Coincidentally, at the end of 2023, Forbes once proposed a top 10 AI prediction for 2024, among which the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI will start to show signs of conflict this year.
Forbes believes that as OpenAI begins to expand its business landscape, it will find that the customer base that the company and Microsoft are competing for is the same group of people. From the perspective of Microsoft's business empire, excessive reliance on OpenAI is not a long-term solution. Microsoft has announced a partnership with OpenAI competitor Cohere, and in addition, facing the heavy cost of running GPT models on a large scale, Microsoft has also started researching smaller models such as the Phi-2 internally.
It is worth mentioning that in the $10 billion investment at the beginning of 2023, although Microsoft only obtained the profit distribution rights of OpenAI profitable entities, it locked in becoming a cloud service provider for OpenAI and obtained exclusive authorization for OpenAI intellectual property. Therefore, antitrust regulations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union are also closely monitoring their cooperation, and there is still a possibility of being "forcibly dismantled" before the substantive rupture of their relationship.
Forbes emphasizes that from a higher perspective, as AI becomes stronger, issues related to AI security, risk, and regulation will occupy the center of the stage. Considering the vastly different histories, cultures, and values of the two companies, it seems inevitable that Microsoft and OpenAI will have disagreements on these issues.