Microsoft Is Forcing Its AI Assistant On People—And Making Them Pay

Like other tech firms playing catch-up in the AI market, Copilot has struggled against OpenAI's ChatGPT

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market for consumer apps, where it has long struggled. It first integrated the tech into its Bing search engine as a chat tool, but failed to gain much ground against Google. It later launched Copilot, a chatbot and content generator that integrates with 365 software to help write emails, summarize meetings and create PowerPoint slides.

The premium consumer version of Copilot launched in January at a price of $20 a month in the U.S., which is on top of the roughly $7 monthly fee for an individual subscription to 365.

Like other tech companies playing catch-up in the AI market, Copilot has struggled against OpenAI's dominant ChatGPT. The Copilot chatbot app was downloaded 37 million times from May 2023 through mid-December, compared with 433 million downloads for ChatGPT, according to Sensor Tower data.