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A couple of months ago, Microsoft raised the price of the Microsoft 365 subscription for consumers in Australia and New Zealand. To make up for that, the company brought Copilot and several AI-powered features to Office apps like Word, Excel, and others. Now, the change is spreading to other countries across the globe. This is the first price increase for Microsoft 365 Personal and Home subscriptions in the United States. Ever since the company launched then-Office 365 12 years ago, it has kept the price at $69.99/year (Personal) and $99.99/year (Home). Now, however, the price goes up by $3/mo, with the new prices being $99.99 and $129.99, respectively. If you are already a Microsoft 365 subscriber, nothing changes for you until your next monthly or yearly payment. Despite that, you can access new Copilot features right away. In addition, those who do not need new AI features and do not want to pay more can opt for the Personal Classic and Family Classic plans. These will allow keeping old prices but with no access to AI features. Microsoft promises to maintain those plans, but "certain new innovations" will only be available in the more expensive subscriptions. Also, the new classic plans are only available to existing customers for one year. In addition to features like document drafting in Word, data analysis in Excel, email summarization in Outlook, and presentation generation in PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 subscribers can access image generation in Microsoft Designer. However, all these features require AI credits, which will be allotted to every subscriber each month. Microsoft says the amount of credits "should be enough for most subscribers." If it is not, you can switch to Copilot Pro, which costs $20/month and does not have usage limits. Microsoft also promises not to use your document data to train its models. This reassurance comes after a report spread across the internet, falsely claiming that Microsoft siphons your document data to train its AI models. In addition, Microsoft will let you turn off Copilot with a few clicks, should you do that to comply with rules at your work or school. You can already access AI-powered features in Office apps if you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, so just make sure you are using the latest version. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Google Workspace customers with Business and Enterprise plans no longer need to buy an add-on to use the search giant's artificial intelligence features within its Workspace services. The company said that Business plans are starting to get the AI features already, while Enterprise customers will get them from January 29. The new AI features are available for many popular Google services including Gmail, Docs, Meet, Drive, Sheets, Slides, and Chat. These plans also give you access to Gemini Advanced and soon NotebookLM Plus. Here is a comprehensive overview of all the new features delivered by Google's AI: Gmail Help me write Effortlessly write and improve your new emails and replies – from polishing your tone with a single click to generating new drafts from scratch. Summarize emails Generate a summary directly from an email message or email thread, highlighting key takeaways. Gemini in the Gmail side panel Draft email responses, query your emails (“Catch me up on Project Clover emails”), summarize emails and email threads. Docs Gemini in the Docs side panel Summarize the main points of a lengthy document or create an outline for a sales pitch, brainstorm a list of ideas for a new marketing campaign. Easily polish your documents with writing, grammar, and formatting suggestions from Gemini. Cover images Create unique inline images and full bleed cover images for a variety of needs, like a promotional flier, marketing campaign brief, restaurant menu, and more. Help me write Simply add a prompt, like “Create a project outline, including research, design, testing, and production phases”, and a draft will instantly be generated. Help me create Create a variety of formatted documents from scratch, like blog posts, press releases, campaign briefs and more. Summarize documents Generate an in-line summary of a document so readers and collaborators can quickly get up to speed. Meet Take notes for me in Meet Automatically capture meeting notes, organize them in Google Docs, and share them with your team. Those joining late can catch up during the meeting with “Summary so far”. Adaptive audio Adaptive audio lets teams join meetings from multiple nearby laptops without echo or feedback, which is useful when conference rooms or meeting equipment is scarce. Additional languages for translated captions in Meet Translated captions provide real-time translations of the speaker's language, helping to make meetings more inclusive and collaborative. Drive Gemini in the Drive side panel Summarize multiple documents, generate insights on a specific topic, help you find files, and more. Work with PDFs in Drive Gemini can summarize long PDFs files, generate insights, or use the PDF to make something new, like a study plan or an email draft. AI classification in Drive IT teams can automatically and continuously identify, classify, and label sensitive files according to the specific needs of your organization. Classified files can then be protected with existing data loss prevention (DLP) controls. Sheets Gemini in the Sheets side panel Quickly create tables, such as an expense tracker, generate insights based on spreadsheet data, and more. Enhanced smartfill Enhanced smartfill can detect if there are relationships between cell contents and make contextual suggestions. Slides Help me create an image With a simple prompt, you can easily create original images for your presentations - like digital marketing campaign concepts or images to enhance your annual planning proposal. Remove image backgrounds Easily remove the background from images added to your Google Slides presentations for a more cohesive design. Gemini in the Slides side panel Quickly generate new slides, like a meeting agenda, generate custom images for your presentations, rewrite content, and more. Chat Summarize conversations Get up to speed with quick summaries for unread conversations in group messages, spaces and threads. Gemini in the Chat side panel Summarize a space or conversation (“What are the key takeaways in this conversation?”), generate a list of action items (“Are there any action items for me in this conversation?”), or ask specific questions (“What is the decision on the project discussed in this conversation?”). As well as: Gemini Advanced Chat with Google’s next-gen AI, Gemini Advanced, to research information, brainstorm ideas, and tackle your most demanding projects. Use Gems to build a team of AI experts to help with repeatable or specialized tasks. NotebookLM Plus Available as an additional service, coming soon as a core service. Accelerate team knowledge sharing by uploading your sources to get instant insights and podcast-like Audio Overviews with NotebookLM Plus. This enhanced version offers notebook customization, advanced sharing and 5x more Audio Overviews, queries, notebooks, and sources. *Visit the Help Center to learn more about specific feature availability. If you were a Google Workspace user before that wasn't using the AI tools, then you may be disappointed to learn that these changes will see your bills rise. However, if you were using the AI add-on, you'll be saving a considerable amount from this streamlining. To learn more about pricing for each of the plans, check out the Help Center. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Microsoft today announced the increase of commercial pricing for Microsoft 365. It is important to note that this is the first substantive pricing update since Microsoft launched Office 365 a decade ago. Microsoft is increasing the price to reflect the increased value offered by Microsoft 365. Since introducing Microsoft 365 we have added 24 apps to the suites—Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard—and have released over 1,400 new features and capabilities. Microsoft also confirmed that there are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products for now. Updated Microsoft 365 pricing: Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user) Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22) Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10) Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23) Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38) Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36) The above pricing changes will go into effect in six months. Along with the price increase, Microsoft also announced unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months. Unlimited dial-in will allow users to join their Microsoft Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location. Source: Microsoft Microsoft announces the first substantive price increase for Microsoft 365