Microsoft will let select customers pay for early access to AI Copilot features in Office

Microsoft Copilot

What you need to know

• Microsoft has announced a paid preview program for AI features in Microsoft 365.
• The program is for enterprise customers looking to test new AI capabilities with employees.
• 600 enterprise customers will be eligible in the first preview wave.

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Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled Copilot for Microsoft 365, a suite of AI capabilities that span the entirety of the Microsoft Office suite, including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. The company has since been testing an early version of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with 20 enterprise customers, including Chevron, Goodyear, and Dow.

Now, the company is announcing a new paid preview program for Microsoft 365 enterprise customers that will allow them to begin testing new Copilot features early. The program is invitation only and will be offered to 600 enterprise customers worldwide in the first wave.

The new Semantics AI Copilot in Teams (Image credit: Microsoft)

Additionally, Microsoft is announcing Semantic Index for Copilot, a new feature for Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 customers which is "a sophisticated map of your user and company data. For example, when you ask it about the “March Sales Report,” it doesn’t simply look for documents with those words in the file name or body. Instead, it understands that “sales reports are produced by Kelly on the finance team and created in Excel.” And it uses that conceptual understanding to determine your intent and help you find what you need."

Microsoft has been pushing AI hard over the last few months. It started in February with the unveiling of Copilot for Bing, an AI powered search assistant that incorporates OpenAI GPT-4 technology. Then in March, Microsoft unveiled Copilot for Microsoft 365, which brings advanced assistant capabilities to Office. Today, the company is announcing even more AI features coming to Microsoft 365.

The company says it's been testing Copilot with 20 enterprise customers, which have provided valuable feedback such as wanting Copilot to be more conversational and offer more advanced multi-turn interactions. It's unclear when Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be ready, unlike Copilot for Bing, the Microsoft 365 Copilot is not yet in public preview.