Demystifying Microsoft’s Copilots

• Microsoft’s range of Copilots, initially broad and confusing, is narrowing, but remains convoluted.
• Copilots, like most AI, are rapidly leaning into compute-based billing to recoup increasing vendor model costs and revenue goals.
• Few Copilots document exactly what features within each service are lit up by a given Copilot, and predicting actual costs is increasingly complex.

Copilot, formally Microsoft Copilot, is a brand applied to a range of Microsoft-hosted user-assistance services. Copilot branding was haphazardly applied to numerous Microsoft offerings integrated with multiple Microsoft services, even in cases where the feature may not use large language models (LLMs), resulting in significant customer confusion. To make effective licensing decisions, customers must understand the range of Copilot options available to them, what distinct value each “family” of Copilot technology purports to offer, how much each offering costs, and where specific details and documentation about it reside, if they are kept up to date at all. Because the costs of most Copilot offerings can be significant, it’s important that customers assess their return on investment (ROI) before and after deployment to ensure that employees continue to get value out of each Copilot, particularly as they evolve and change. This report surveys key Copilot paid offerings and their features, as well as discussing Copilot-related terms that can be useful for disambiguation and deciphering of Microsoft’s rapidly changing Copilots.