AI is taking its place in the software we use every day. After several months of testing, Google, Adobe and Microsoft announced the end of the free trial period. To continue to benefit from their respective artificial intelligence, you will have to pay.
Now that most of us have had a taste of AI in software, vendors want to push us to the cash register. The latest announcement, from Microsoft, was Thursday September 21, 2023 in New York, about Copilot, its assistant linked to an improved version of chatGPT, created by OpenAI. Microsoft now holds 49% after investing $11 billion.
Copilot, which was already available in preview, will begin to become a commercial product this Tuesday, September 26, with its arrival in the new Windows 11 update. Then on November 1, it will be the turn of Office 365 , the office suite with Powerpoint, Excel and Word in particular, to integrate this AI: an option at 30 dollars per month – probably between 30 and 40 euros per month, and per user in France – which would amount to doubling the amount of certain subscriptions.
Microsoft like Google: AI at $30 per month
Copilot saves time, especially with repetitive tasks and all summary exercises. But it’s better to have confidence, because once activated on all positions in a company, Copilot will know everything about the activity of each employee. And we wonder what would prevent it from evaluating productivity, or from identifying those who are resistant to this or that project. Office, the office suite, is found in 80% of companies in France.
Microsoft has, in fact, followed in the footsteps of Google, which made a comparable announcement on August 29. We’re talking about Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, etc.
Google’s artificial intelligence is called Duet AI. Same: she can answer emails for you, transform a text document into a presentation, summarize it in a few lines or create a graph from figures that she herself has put in a table. Google had given the “the” in terms of prices, since Duet AI will also cost 30 dollars per month, per user. Microsoft and Google going head-to-head on office automation powered by AI: this is probably one of the big battles of the coming year.
Adobe: +5 dollars per month
And then, Adobe, the creative software specialist, also signals the end of playtime, after two billion pieces of content, created in six months, by its AI called Firefly, an image-generating artificial intelligence that has delighted those who use it. have tested. Example in Photoshop: just type “candy pink chalet” to see a candy pink chalet appear in its alpine landscape, with two other variations in reserve, just to have the choice.
You can also extend the image outside the frame by letting Firefly create the portion that was not captured by the camera. It’s often astonishing. The counterpart is that from November 1, the subscription to the Creative Cloud suite, which brings together all Adobe software, will increase by around $5 per month.