Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's flagship AI assistant, available as a standalone product and embedded throughout the Microsoft 365 suite. Originally launched as Bing Chat in 2023 before rebranding, Copilot is now available across dozens of surfaces: the Copilot web app, Windows sidebar, Bing, Edge, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and more.

At the consumer level, the free tier provides GPT-powered chat, web search integration, image generation via DALL-E 3, and document summarization — all without a subscription. The free experience handles everyday tasks competently: drafting emails, summarizing articles, answering questions, and generating images from text prompts.

**Microsoft 365 Copilot** is the enterprise offering, and where the product shows its real depth. Embedded in Word, it drafts, rewrites, or summarizes documents from a prompt. In Excel, it analyzes data, builds formulas, and generates charts. In PowerPoint, it turns outlines or existing documents into slide decks. In Teams, it summarizes meeting transcripts, lists action items, and catches late attendees up on what they missed. In Outlook, it drafts replies, flags priority emails, and synthesizes long threads into key points.

What distinguishes Copilot from general-purpose AI assistants is its access to organizational context. With a Microsoft 365 license, Copilot can search across a company's emails, documents, calendars, and Teams messages to generate answers grounded in internal information — not just public knowledge. This makes it useful for tasks like "summarize all discussions about the Q3 budget" or "find the latest version of our vendor contract."

**Pricing:** The free tier is available to anyone. Copilot Pro costs $20/user/month and adds priority access with deeper Microsoft 365 integration. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business starts at $18/user/month. Enterprise is $30/user/month. The new Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Suite, launched May 2026, bundles M365 E5, Copilot, and the Agent 365 platform for $99/user/month.

**Who it's for:** Copilot's consumer tier suits anyone already in the Microsoft ecosystem who wants AI assistance without switching tools. The enterprise product is built for knowledge workers whose daily output runs through Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook — and who want an AI assistant grounded in their organization's actual data.