How do You Want to Get What You Want in Microsoft? Gareth Oystryk, Senior Director of Marketing for Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365

“We know that people are willing to pay for the integration into Microsoft 365,” says Gareth Oystryk, senior director of marketing for Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365, in an interview with The Verge. “Copilot Pro is an opportunity to learn from our power users and early adopters. Our plan has been how to bring this value to as many Subscribers as possible, in a way that works for them and us.

The Personal Classic and Family Classic are only going to be available for a year, says Oystryk. “They’ll be available as folks go through the renewal cycle. If they cancel they have the opportunity to choose between 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. The classic plans won’t get any of Microsoft’s new features. A new feature will not be included in the plans for the future, but security updates and minor features will continue to be delivered.

Microsoft makes it easy to stop Copilot in Office apps if you don’t want the assistant, you’re a student and you have policies against using artificial intelligence. There are times where users want to turn off Copilot, which is the most interesting feedback we learned. This will be coming to Word and excel in the coming weeks as we add new settings to some of our key apps.

Secret Projects of Microsoft in the DevDiv Organization: Social Engineers and AI Assistive Technology for Microsoft Teams and Xbox Developer Direct

Microsoft has an obsessive hunger to win at artificial intelligence. Even though security remains a priority, it seems like promoting artificial intelligence is an equally high priority.

Microsoft has spent the past 15 years selling cloud computing to businesses, tempting them to move off traditional software that’s licensed and installed to on-premise servers toward servers hosted by the software giant. Nadella led Microsoft’s transformation to cloud infrastructure and services before becoming CEO, and it’s been hugely successful for the company. A software solution that Microsoft can sell to businesses appears to be the bet on being made by Nadella.

I’ve spoken to some employees in Microsoft’s Dev Div organization this week, and it’s clear there is some unease about the company’s commitment to AI at all costs. Microsoft’s new AI engineering group emerged just days after Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg predicted 2025 is going to be a year where “Meta, and the other companies that are working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a mid-level engineer that you have at your company that can write code.” In an interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said he believes that, over time, a lot of the code in Meta’s apps “will be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers.”

This is where Copilot really transforms from a simple chatbot into a more assistive technology that can analyze Excel data for you, write paragraphs in Word, or generate an entire PowerPoint presentation. A lot of CTOs tell me that businesses have found the most value from Copilot inside Microsoft Teams, where the AI assistant will transcribe meetings and pull out key talking points to make it easy to catch up on calls you might have missed.

This week’s worldwide launch of the Microsoft365 subscription change is more a test for the company before it does something similar for commercial subscriptions.

Thanks for reading and becoming a subscriber. This week’s issue was a day late due to Microsoft’s final AI announcement of the week coming in hot on Thursday. Next week’s Notepad will also arrive on Friday, the day after the Xbox Developer Direct event.

If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s other secret projects, you can reach me via email at [email protected] or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. If you would prefer to chat on Telegram, I am a tomwarren.