At its recent Inspire event, Microsoft made a series of major announcements centered around generative AI, introducing Bing Chat Enterprise and Sales Copilot. The company also revealed the pricing for its Copilot tool within Microsoft 365.

During the Inspire conference, where Microsoft gathered its partners, the company elaborated on its strategy for deploying generative AI capabilities across its product lineup. It was announced that Copilot will be available to customers using Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium at a price of $30 per user per month, excluding taxes.

Copilot, integrated into Microsoft’s suite of productivity and collaboration applications, can automate tasks and create content, such as analyzing Excel data, designing PowerPoint presentations, and summarizing Teams meetings. This pricing will take effect once Copilot is "generally available," though Microsoft has not provided a specific date. Currently, 600 enterprise customers are enrolled in the early access program.

Bing Chat Enterprise Debuts

Microsoft also announced the expansion of Bing Chat with a new Enterprise version and introduced Visual Search. Bing Chat Enterprise is a professional version of the AI-powered chat function Microsoft launched in February. This offering allows users to ask questions and receive responses from GPT-4, the large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, in which Microsoft has heavily invested since late 2022.

In a blog post, Microsoft executives Yusuf Mehdi and Jared Spataro noted that "similar to Bing Chat, Bing Chat Enterprise relies on web data and delivers thorough and verifiable responses, complete with citations and visual elements such as charts, tables, and images, all crafted in alignment with our AI principles." To ensure data protection, the service does not record any chat data or use it to train the underlying LLM. Additionally, Microsoft does not have direct access to the data, meaning that no one, including the company, can view the information used to power the tool.

"Bing Chat Enterprise is rolling out in preview today and is included at no additional cost with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium," Microsoft stated. It will also be available later as a standalone product for $5 per user per month. Moreover, Bing Chat will soon integrate image search via GPT-4. Users can upload an image to Bing Chat to search for similar content, learn more about the context of the image, or ask questions related to it. Visual search within Bing Chat is already being deployed for the Bing Desktop and mobile apps, with plans to add it to Bing Chat Enterprise later.

Introducing Sales Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365

At the Inspire event, Microsoft also unveiled Sales Copilot. "Designed for sales professionals, this version of the generative AI assistant is distinct from Microsoft 365 Copilot and Dynamics 365 Copilot," the company clarified, adding that the assistant can be accessed through tools used by sales teams, including Outlook, Teams, and Dynamics 365 Sales.

According to Jason Wong, an analyst at Gartner, Sales Copilot is "essentially a rebranded version of Viva Sales with added generative AI capabilities." He also noted that certain editions of Dynamics 365 will require a Sales Copilot license to integrate with Salesforce and other third-party systems.