Getting Consumers Interested in AI from Microsoft: Copilot, Personal Classic, Family Classic, Outlook, OneNote, Office and Word
Microsoft is introducing a new credits system and other changes today. It works across all of Microsoft’s consumer experiences, including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. You will get a monthly amount of credits in Microsoft365 Personal and Home to use on things like image generation in the Designer app or in Windows apps. Copilot Pro essentially includes unlimited usage of all of these AI features, based on a fair usage policy.
Personal Classic and Family Classic are the new plans that are only going to be available for a year. “They’ll be available as folks go through the renewal cycle. If they cancel, they have an opportunity to pick a Personal Classic or Family Classic plan.
These plans will only be available to existing Microsoft 365 subscribers, and new subscribers will get AI-powered Office features by default with the new pricing changes. It sounds like the classic plans will not get new features from Microsoft. They will continue to get security updates and minor feature updates, but no new innovative innovations will be included in the plans in the future.
Microsoft is also making it easy to turn off Copilot in Office apps if you simply don’t want the AI assistant or you’re a student and your school has policies against using AI. There are times when users want to turn off Copilot, which is the most interesting piece of feedback we learned. “We’ve been working to add new settings to some of our key apps that allow people to toggle off Copilot.” This is coming to Word first today and then Excel and PowerPoint in the coming weeks.
As the competition heats up in 2025, expect to see Microsoft come up with even more inventive pay-as-you-go agents or AI credit methods to get consumers and businesses addicted to AI.
Microsoft has been selling cloud computing to businesses for 15 years, in part so that they will abandon traditional licensed and installed software in favor of server hosted by the software giant. The transformation of Microsoft to the cloud infrastructure and services under Nadella was a huge success for the company. Now, the bet appears to be that Microsoft can sell businesses a software solution that can automate many people based services.
Thousands of engineers have devoted their entire careers learning how to build software at Microsoft and Meta. One engineer in Microsoft’s new CoreAI team tells me there’s now a feeling that if you’re not all in on AI, there won’t be a place for you in this new team.
The free chat side of Copilot has already been popular for businesses that rely on Microsoft’s software and services, and by adding in agent capabilities, there’s an upsell opportunity to get businesses to pay extra to automate tasks with AI.
Secret Projects of Microsoft: Measuring Changes at the Global Launch of the Windows Server Operating System and Connecting to the Signal Messaging App
Microsoft had been testing the changes in some markets, and the global launch this week feels like an even bigger test for the company than in Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.
Thanks for subscribing and reading to the very end. This week’s issue was a day late due to Microsoft’s final AI announcement of the week coming in hot on Thursday. The day after the event, next week’s Notepad will arrive.
If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s other secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. If you’d prefer to chat there, I’m also on Telegram.