Microsoft hasn't said for how long this "limited time" offer will last, but presumably it will only last for a year or two to help ease the transition between the old pricing and the new pricing. New subscribers won't be offered the option to pay for the Classic plans.

Microsoft is launching a new pay-as-you-go plan for corporate customers that bundles together several of the company's existing AI-powered productivity features for Microsoft 365.

Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out a chat service allowing businesses to use on-demand AI agents for routine tasks, betting on the pay-as-you-go model to drive up the adoption of the technology.

Microsoft is adding a new wrinkle to Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI service for businesses, with a free chat experience that includes the ability to create and use AI agents on a pay-as-you-go basis inside organizations.

M365 Copilot Chat is a chat interface powered by OpenAI’s GPT4o that serves up responses based on web data (rather than information held in the Microsoft Graph, as per the paid M365 Copilot subscription). It also includes features such as Copilot Pages and image generation, as well as data protection and IT admin controls at no cost to users.