Earlier this month, Microsoft announced its premium Copilot for Microsoft 365 AI service will be available for higher education schools and their students starting on April 1 as a paid add-on. Today, Microsoft announced that those plans had changed.
In a blog post, Microsoft announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 for higher education customers will now be available one month later, on May 1, 2024. The blog post did not mention a reason for this delay.
In addition, the AI service will be limited at first to subscribers that have Microsoft 365 or Office 365 A3 or A5 licenses. Office 365 A1 licenses will not be a part of this launch at first, but Microsoft says it will add A1 subscribers sometime in the coming months.
The blog stated that education customers must buy Copilot for Microsoft 365 either from resellers from its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program or their Microsoft account team. Microsoft added that customers based in China will be able to get Copilot for Microsoft 365 for faculty members directly via a web store starting on April 5, 2024.
Microsoft previously said that a private preview program for Copilot with commercial data protection will be available for schools with students younger than 18 years old sometime in the spring of 2024.
In related news, the blog post announced today that Microsoft Education customers can now access the public preview version of Copilot for Finance. This version of the AI assistant was first unveiled in late February and is supposed to help with the automation of normally tedious financial tasks. Education customers can sign up to test Copilot for Finance at this link.
Finally, education customers will be able to purchase and access Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service on May 1, 2024. Both of these specific AI assistants became generally available in early February.