back to article You begged Microsoft to be reasonable. Instead it made Copilot reason-able with OpenAI GPT-o1

Microsoft has made Think Deeper, OpenAI's GPT-o1 reasoning model, "free and available for all users of Copilot." This is just two weeks after increasing the cost of Copilot-infused Microsoft 365 by $3 per month and the release of DeepSeek R1, a competitive free and open source AI model from the eponymous China-based AI firm. …

  1. Baird34

    I'm Free!

    I'm happy to work for you for free! Yes, Free! It'll only cost you £1000 per week.

    1. Wellyboot Silver badge

      Re: I'm Free!

      Don't sell yourself short :)

    2. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge

      All I want

      Is to be able to turn it off. I use LLM's occasionally, but I want them off 99% of the time. No spying in my work, etc.

    3. Rafael #872397
      Happy

      Re: I'm Free!

      I'll do it for £850/week! Not only free, but cheaper!

    4. DJO Silver badge

      Re: I'm Free!

      You're confusing salary with expenses.

      I'll happily work for free with no wages whatsoever.

      There is a minor administration charge, you know for paper work, travelling expenses, secretarial fees, equipment rental, and what-have-you, quite fair and a snip at only £250 a day but my labour is totally free of charge.

      In the Microsoft case they've extended the package and increased the overall charge but there no specific charge for the o-1 addition. To say it is "free" is technically correct (the best kind of correct™) but perhaps a teeny bit disingenuous.

    5. The Indomitable Gall

      Re: I'm Free!

      Nonono. I'll work for free, but you've got to pay me £1000 per week to supply a morning coffee for one of your unpaid workforce.

  2. PCScreenOnly

    Not what I call it

    "Don't get me wrong, I understand the strategy (especially with the panic around DeepSeek) and I will appreciate having access to o1 in Copilot. But it seems disingenuous to suggest this is being given away for free."

    I don't appreciate some shit I do not want being forced upon me without warning and then EXPECTING me to pay more for this unwanted crap

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not what I call it

      You do get a choice. You can still pay more and not use the unwanted crap.

  3. Grunchy Silver badge

    Who are the dopes?

    “M365” was a joke since day 1. Who are the rubes paying the idiot tax??

    To reiterate: massgrave.dev has the “microsoft activation script” for activating MS Office for ‘nutten, so I am told.

    (I wouldn’t know, I dropped microsoft long time ago now.)

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Who are the dopes?

      It's just a business expense for me, and the family version allows dependants to use it for school work as well.

      Do you have any idea how ingrained usage of MS Office is out there?

      1. m4r35n357 Silver badge

        Re: Who are the dopes?

        I think is has now (after three decades of M$ hegemony) passed into the realm of genetics. The important question from the evolutionary standpoint now is: "do M$ users breed more efficiently than non-M$ users"?

        There may be cause for hope ;)

      2. Blazde Silver badge

        Re: Who are the dopes?

        Do you have any idea how ingrained usage of MS Office is out there

        Just noting Office LTSC prices didn't jump by a third this week.

    2. David 132 Silver badge

      Re: Who are the dopes?

      Pretty sure the First Rule of massgrave is "Don't Talk About Massgrave".

    3. xyz Silver badge

      Re: Who are the dopes?

      My mum.

  4. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    1001 Nights?

    I am sorry but Mustafa Suleyman and "I urge you to give it a try. It’s truly magical" immediately bring to my fevered imagination a picture of a second hand flying carpet salesman in Harun al-Rashid's Bagdad.

    To my mind trusting AI is not unlike flying on a second hand threadbare persian carpet at 3000m (10,000'.)

    AI has already been likened to releasing a djinni from its bottle and most of those stories don't have anything as pleasant as Barbara Eden materializing. Even The Brass Bottle† also has a salutary lesson or two.

    I Dream of Jeannie was inspired by the 1964 film of the 1900 novel.

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: 1001 Nights?

      Upvoted. Also The Brass Bottle had the always-wonderful Burl Ives (RIP) in it, as the Genie - "Fakrash", if memory serves.

      If I may be permitted a more recent cultural reference, likening current "AI" to a magic carpet brings to mind the scene in Disney's Aladdin where Robin Williams points out the flying carpet's emergency exits. "The exits hallucinations are here, here, hereherehereherehereherehereherehere and here..."

  5. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    I did the "cancel office 365" thing and was immediately offered the lower priced "classic" version, which was about £2.50 cheaper per month (family version). Came to £8 per month now.

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      Yes, I heard about the classic version through Louis Rossman's channel on YouTube. He was saying it was exactly the same price as what Office365 was before the addition of the "free" AI services.

      The question is whether Microsoft have dropped the price because they want to claim it is genuinely sub-par, or if it's just a matter that the UK pricing was recalculated after changes in the exchange rate...

  6. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

    Like it or not, you will use Microsoft's AI tools. They're being embedded everywhere and into everything and eventually the options to disable them will be removed.

    Whether that removal comes at the behest of the US government, your boss, or some super-secret security agency from somewhere is irrelevant: the main point is your choice will be denied.

    You only have what "rights" the Drumpf Administration permits without any say or input from Congress or Senate, apparently. Your "rights" are subject to one orange psychopath's personal will and pen, if current events are to be believed.

    1. Blade9983
      Linux

      I know a certain penguin that will help remove all unwanted Microsoft features from your computer.

  7. MacGuffin

    This Would be Truly Magical

    When I can tell Microsoft's AI Tools to block all images and videos of a selected person or persons in Edge...

    THEN I will believe AI is a real thing.

    I'll start with Microsoft's biggest AI Tool first.

  8. Pirate Peter

    this is why I will never subscribe to any M$ service

    "This is just two weeks after increasing the cost of Copilot-infused Microsoft 365 by $3 per month and the release of DeepSeek R1"

    I only ever buy a 365 activation once a year, I pay about 75 pounds for an 365 family activation code for 12 months services , I keep getting pestered that "I could save money by paying monthly direct to Microsoft" not going to happen, I made that mistake 20 years ago with an Xbox subscription, it took several months and lots of calls to cancel the charge on my credit card, never going down that route again

    it gets better, M$ want me to add a copilot pro monthly subscription as I only get 60 co pilot credits a month shared by all 6 licenses of the 365 family subscription, if I was to do that for all 6 users the additional cost would be 1450 pounds !!!! on top of my 75 pound 365 family, are they mad????

    I also got the email the other day "your 365 has just got better with integrated copilot", what a load of BS, first response was to search and disable copilot in all my apps, but its a win win for m$, A:- they can claim another installation of copilot (to justify the eye watering amount of investor cash they have sunk into this POS) and B: - I am not using it so they incur no costs, just more profit

    I am slowly repurposing and testing linux and libra office on an old PC to confirm I can replace my aging win 10 devices, as no way I am having Win 11 on personal kit, bad enough work have inflicted it on me

    1. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

      Re: this is why I will never subscribe to any M$ service

      If your primary goal is to do email, surf, run office automation and drawing applications, and maybe do some casual gaming, then your existing Windows 10 hardware is most likely supported out of the box by now if it was ever popular at all. When the time comes to replace Windows, boot the old Windows box into BIOS with your Linux distro install stick in the USB port. Select the port and boot from that USB stick. When asked what you want to do with the disk, select "advanced options." This should show you the layout of your disks in the system, so that you can delete the partitions Windows created there. Once they're deleted, create a 10GB /boot partition, a 5GB /boot/efi partition, and turn the rest over to a / partition. Continue with the installation; there will be a delay while the drive is quick-formatted.

      If you don't delete the Windows partitions first, you won't be able to install the Linux bootloader on the drive. It is particularly important to delete the existing EFI partition.

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