Microsoft pulled free Deep Research from Copilot today and moved it behind a $19.99 subscription, so if you have been using that tool for work without paying anything, your workflow just changed as of this morning. I can’t say I’m surprised by this, as companies creating and selling AI solutions of any kind are probably feeling the back-end financial pinch. Moving to a subscription-based (ugh) monetization model is the way to recoup those costs.
If I’m like everyone else, the confusing thing is what level of Copilot I’m using. I have an Office 365 Family subscription, which includes Copilot (in some way). Copilot is embedded in Microsoft Office (remember Clippy?) and is available to all of my family members. As the primary subscriber, I get some AI credits to use with Copilot. Here’s a quick overview. But from what I can tell, the Family plan doesn’t offer much, so it is probably not affected by the removal of Group Chat, Podcasts, and Deep Research. I could be wrong.
If you want to see all available plans, check out the Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing page, which shows everything. The struggle that everyday consumers will continue to face is choosing a specific AI (e.g., Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, etc.) and then, within that choice, choosing a plan that makes financial sense. If you are getting AI through your work or business, I think you are probably lucky, but you don’t have a choice, so you have to make do with what you get.