Comment by red_admiral
1 day ago
> Companies were paying for more than 30 million Copilot subscriptions as of the end of June. And while individual users are free to use limited versions of Copilot’s chat experience, its most powerful tools are reserved for subscribers to the company’s M365 apps bundle, which has about 90 million paying users.
It needs to be more widely known that if you cancel a (home) 365 subscription, you'll be offered a cheaper version without AI integration.
Now if I could just get them to start paying me cash for training their AI on my open source code and selling it rather than being force fed a Copilot grant.
There's no 'open source, but closed to training' software license?
How would you possibly enforce that?
Sorry what? Honest question.
Microsoft allows you to subscribe to Microsoft 365 personal or family without AI for a small discount, but they hid the option on a page you can only get to if you click cancel on your subscription.
Microsoft are currently being sued in Australia by consumer protection (ACCC) over this practice.
Iirc Microsoft increased the pricing on existing subscriptions on next renewal citing AI as the reason for the increase, they then added a no AI version at the original price, effectively opting all users into the 'upgrade' rather than requiring them to explicitly upgrade their licence.
[un]believable. Thank you.
H..how is this legal.. in 2026
5 replies →
It’s a documented fact that a lot of subscription services will offer you a discount if you ask to cancel. This has been a thing in the US with cable tv for about a decade, as far as I’m aware. I think some cell providers might do the same. Not everything, but some.
But in this case, the discount comes with a downgrade. Still worth it for many people, and Microsoft shouldn't hide it.