Microsoft announced that Office applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will receive a series of new free AI features in early 2026, without requiring users to pay $30 per month to subscribe to Microsoft 365 Copilot. This means that more users can experience the convenience brought by smart office without high costs.
It is reported that Microsoft has introduced a free version of Copilot Chat for Microsoft 365 applications as early as September this year. This upgrade will further enhance the functionality of the chatbot - it will not only be able to view the contents of the entire Outlook inbox, but will also support calendar items and meeting scheduling. Users can use Copilot to organize, arrange and prepare for meetings without being limited to a single email conversation, and there is no need to pay for Copilot authorization.
In addition, the "Agent mode" that was originally only open to paid Copilot subscribers will soon be fully open to all Microsoft 365 users in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In Excel and Word, users can quickly generate complex spreadsheets and documents by simply entering prompts, and can freely choose Anthropic or OpenAI inference models in Excel. The Agent mode in PowerPoint supports powerful functions such as automatically applying corporate brand templates, creating new slides, rewriting and formatting text, and adding images.
Microsoft plans to preview these new free AI features to Microsoft 365 users no later than March 2026. For the enterprise market, Microsoft will also launch the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business version for small and medium-sized enterprises next month. The subscription price is US$21 per month and is suitable for small teams of less than 300 people.
Earlier this year, Microsoft integrated the AI Copilot function into the consumer-oriented Microsoft 365 package, and in October, Copilot in sales, services, finance and other fields was also included in the main subscription package without separate charges. The popularity of the Agent model now indicates that Microsoft is accelerating the widespread application of AI in mainstream office scenarios.