7 Microsoft AI Copilot: Which One Should You Use?

Microsoft has launched an entire line of AI Copilot products to revolutionize the way we interact with its software ecosystem, including productivity, security, encryption, and more.

So it stands to reason that choosing the right Copilot allows you to get more done in less time – but which Copilot is right for you and how much does it cost?

1. Microsoft Copy

Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing AI Chat) is a free AI chatbot that is accessible via a web browser and on operating systems like Windows, macOS, and iPadOS. It can scan the internet to answer queries, create and edit AI images, and generate text, and has access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo during off-peak hours. You can also interact with it using text, voice, and images, and it can use plugins and GPTs. So if you want a free multimodal chatbot with access to GPT-4, try Microsoft Copilot right now using your web browser.

2. Copy in Windows 11

Copilot in Windows 11 is a free AI-powered assistant that comes installed with Windows 11 version 23H2 and above. It is built directly into Windows 11 but goes one step further than the Microsoft Copilot search option in the Start menu by bringing Copilot directly to the desktop and giving it the ability to open programs, change features, etc. This opens up a lot of possibilities because you can essentially use Microsoft Copilot to instruct Windows 11 what to do.

Although currently in preview, Copilot in Windows can already perform simple tasks like changing Windows settings, arranging application windows, setting alarms, launching applications, and troubleshooting your PC. It also adds AI capabilities to popular Windows applications like Paint, Photos, Snipping Tool, and Clipchamp.

3. Copilot Pro

If you need a faster, more capable AI assistant, enhance your Copilot experience by subscribing to Copilot Pro. The personal license is currently priced at $20/month, but it offers significantly more capabilities than Copilot on Windows by adding the following features:

• Priority access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo.
• Create DALL-E 3 images faster plus 100x daily enhancements with Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator).
• Integrate AI into your Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook (separate Microsoft 365 subscription required).
• Access the Copilot Builder Tool, which allows you to create custom GPTs.

The biggest reason to pay for Copilot Pro is to harness the power of AI in your work. With Copilot Pro, you get AI capabilities in Microsoft 365 apps without the significant hardware resources required by Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) found in apps like Nvidia’s Chat with RTX . This makes it a great solution for people who want to use AI on lower-powered machines like laptops and tablets.

4. Copilot for Microsoft 365

If you find all the features in Copilot Pro useful and need it for your team, then Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a service your team might be interested in. It offers all the features of Copilot Pro with powerful additions like:

• Copilot in Teams : Get you up to speed by providing a summary of key points, action items, and decisions made by your team in Microsoft Teams.
• Microsoft Graph Grounding : Create secure, unified APIs that connect different Microsoft 365 services together.
• Enterprise-Grade Data Protection : Copilot for Microsoft 365 inherits your organization's existing Microsoft 365 security, privacy, identity, and compliance policies.
• Copilot Studio : Create custom GPTs for your organization quickly and easily with minimal manual programming.

Copilot for Microsoft starts at $30 per person. There is no minimum seat requirement, but your organization will be charged an annual fee. There are also prerequisites for Copilot for Microsoft 365, such as a license for Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Office 365 E5 for enterprise customers, Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Premium for enterprise customers, and Microsoft 365 A3/A5 for education customers.

5. GitHub Copilot

Looking for a Copilot specifically for coding? GitHub Copilot is a premium AI assistant built into some of the most popular coding environments, like Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs. GitHub Copilot lets you code faster and with fewer errors by using AI to complete code, suggest, refactor, and debug. It also comes with GitHub Copilot Chat, a chatbot that lets you create code, ask questions, and provide helpful information for coding.

GitHub Copilot Personal is a premium service that costs $10/month. However, if you are a student or teacher, GitHub Education offers the service for free once you are verified. If you are a programmer, hobbyist, or someone who wants to learn to code, GitHub Copilot is a great service that can provide better utility than other AI assistants like ChatGPT.

6. Copilot for Sales

Looking to use AI to help manage your ecommerce site? Copilot for Sales is an AI companion that integrates with your CRM to provide real-time insights to help you optimize your business. You can use Copilot for Sales to analyze leads, track deals, draft emails, present Outlook meetings with data from your CRM, create summaries, and create content in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.

Copilot for Sales starts at $50/month and will require users to have a product license for Microsoft 365. Customers who already subscribe to Copilot for Microsoft 365 can use the service for $20/month.

7. Copilot for Security

Copilot for Security is an AI assistant that integrates services like Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Intune, and Microsoft Entra. Copilot for Security enables IT professionals to protect their services by proactively scanning for threats and deploying automated responses for faster threat management, combining conversational AI chatbot elements with threat intelligence.

The Microsoft Tech Community blog has provided helpful insights into the two main areas most people are wondering about: What will it do and how much will it cost?

Copilot for Security will focus on four critical security operations tasks:

• Incident Summary : Quickly understand security incidents, providing alerts for specific security issues
• Impact Analysis : Use AI analytics to detail the direct impact of a security incident and organize a response
• Reverse Engineering of scripts : Copilot for Security will attempt to reverse engineer malware, scripts, and other threats to speed up analysis and incident response.
• Guided Response : Provide a step-by-step outline of incident response, action instructions, etc.

Interestingly, Microsoft is introducing a new pricing structure for Copilot for Security, suggesting the AI ​​tool will be "billed monthly through a new Security Compute Unit (SCU) at $4/hour." It's not clear what power, processing power, or otherwise you'll be considered for, but integrating AI more deeply into security analytics could be a boon for the security industry.