The CoPilot Pro leak suggests that Microsoft will soon make you pay for its ChatGPT Plus features
Microsoft has spent billions integrating ChatGPT into its Copilot AI assistant for Edge, Bing and Windows 11 – and a new code leak suggests it could be planning to recoup some of that investment very soon.
As noted by Android Authority, some new Edge browser updates for Android include several code references to a “Copilot Pro” layer that is not yet available. Right now, Copilot (formerly called Bing Chat) is completely free and, like Tom’s guide recently noted, even provides some access to the latest ChatGPT model, GPT-4 Turbo.
But those days may be numbered if Copilot Pro becomes a reality. The code contains references to a “pay wall upsell” option, suggesting that Microsoft is planning an equivalent to ChatGPT Plus. The latter currently costs $20 / £16 / AU$28 per month.
The code strings discovered in Edge also give us hints of what kind of features a Copilot Pro subscription could offer us. These include access to the latest AI models (in other words, ChatGPT’s GPT-4 Turbo), priority server access, and “high-quality” image generation.
While it seems likely that a free Copilot tier will continue to be available, the days of Microsoft giving us loads of free AI benefits could be coming to an end.
Positives
The arrival of a ChatGPT Pro subscription has always been a matter of when rather than if, when you consider how much it costs to deploy an AI assistant on the scale of Microsoft Copilot. In the case of ChatGPT, some estimates suggest the Computer hardware costs can reach $700,000 per day.
This is why ChatGPT launched its Plus plan in February 2023 – and a year later, it looks like Microsoft Copilot Pro could soon follow in that paid model’s footsteps.
Unfortunately, that could mean that the free version of Copilot becomes a bit dumber, as that version currently gives you access to the latest models of ChatGPT as well as Dall-E 3 image generation.
Hopefully some of Copilot’s current limitations, such as the limit to 300 calls per day, will also be relaxed in the Pro version. While we don’t yet know when this Copilot Pro level will launch, it looks like we might find out soon.