Microsoft introduces new ‘pay-as-you-go’ AI agents

Microsoft will begin offering access to AI agents — specialized generative models that can operate independently and automate repetitive daily tasks — to enterprise users. The new program is called Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and offers “pay-as-you-go agents to our existing free chat experience for Microsoft 365 commercial customers,” the company announced Wednesday.

The “free plus metered agent usage” Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat offers many of the same features as the existing $30 per user per month “Microsoft 365 Copilot” enterprise program, including access to a chatbot powered by GPT-4o, Copilot Pages, file uploads, image and code generation, enterprise data protection, and, of course, to Copilot Studio, where individual users and IT departments alike can create AI agents. Note, however, that the free Chat program does not grant you access to the Copilot personal assistant, which integrates the AI’s capabilities into the rest of the 365 Copilot app ecosystem such as Word, Outlook, and Excel.

The company posits in its announcement post that agents could be leveraged by customer service representatives to provide pertinent account details ahead of a customer meeting or that field service agents could rely on an AI agent to “access step-by-step instructions and real-time product knowledge.”

Leading AI firms, faced with rapidly diminishing performance returns despite throwing staggering amounts of compute, energy, and cooling resources at the problem, have started looking to these agents as the “next big thing” in generative AI. They are more lightweight and efficient at performing simple, repetitive tasks than the full-size large language models they’re distilled from.

What’s more, they’re purpose built to take care of the dull minutia of modern office work, which is the sort of tangible benefit that investors have been clamoring for instead of the “hey, look at what we got this computer to do” hyped performance milestones that AI developers typically have shown off in recent years. 2025 is certainly shaping up to be a breakout year for AI agents.

Anthropic’s Claude led the way last November with the release of its Computer Use API, which allows an AI to emulate a human user through the computer’s keyboard and mouse. OpenAI, of which Microsoft is a major investor, reportedly plans to release its own version of agents through its developer API later this month, launched its initial step into AI agents with ChatGPT Tasks.

Google, which was rumored to be releasing its agent, Project Jarvis, in December announced earlier this week that it has partnered with Mercedes-Benz to integrate its automotive agent into the next generation of MBUX navigation and entertainment systems, starting with the Mercedes CLA later this year.