One of the most useful and important features of Microsoft's new $20/month Copilot Pro subscription is its integration with Microsoft 365. However, if you have a family account and want multiple members to use the AI feature, you should be prepared to pay a hefty monthly bill.

Currently, a family subscription to Microsoft 365 is $9.99 per month for up to six people, each of whom can sign in to five devices at once on their PC, Mac, and phone. This does not include the AI features available in Copilot.

Being able to generate text in Word, analyze data in Excel, and generate PowerPoint slides from text prompts is a big upgrade, but Microsoft is asking $20/month for all users, whether personal or family 365 accounts to pay for the service.

The small print on the Microsoft Copilot Pro page states, "If you have a Microsoft 365 Family Subscription and share the subscription with others, you can use Copilot with Microsoft 365 apps by each Copilot Pro subscription must be purchased".

If you are using a Microsoft 365 Family Subscription with a capacity of six users on one plan, and you all want to use the AI features, the monthly cost jumps to $130, including $9.99 for 365.

If you don't need all the features right away, it may be worth the wait, as some features, including data analysis in Excel, are still experimental, error-prone, and only available in English.

Microsoft also warns about this in small print: "The Copilot experience in Excel is currently in preview and only supports English; for OneNote users, the benefits of Copilot Pro are only available in Windows View.

The personal 365 plan allows users to sign in to five devices at once. Thus, if you are comfortable sharing data and having the same document on two accounts, you can sign in with one Microsoft account and share it with several users, who can then access both Copilot Pros.

This approach not only raises data privacy concerns, but may also affect how the AI learns from your actions and use cases. Another option is to forgo Microsoft products altogether and opt for Google's Workspace tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Google's Workspace product has a tool called Duet that offers similar functionality to 365's Copilot. This tool can generate text, create images for Slides, and perform analysis of data stored in Sheets. It can also integrate Anthropic's Claude 2 into Sheets as a plug-in.