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 relaunching its free Copilot for businesses as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat today, complete with the ability to use AI agents. Copilot Chat is Microsoft’s latest attempt to get people used to using AI at work and relying on it enough to tempt them into paying $30 per month to get the full Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft is looking to boost usage of its Copilot AI tools for businesses. (GeekWire File Photo /) Microsoft is adding a new wrinkle to

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.

Microsoft has introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new AI-powered tool that integrates free and pay-as-you-go agents into its existing free chat experience for Microsoft 365 commercial customers.

Microsoft is launching a pay-as-you-go plan for corporate customers that bundles together several, but not all, of the company’s existing AI-powered productivity features for Microsoft 365. The new plan,