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The app once called Microsoft 365 Copilot is now simply Microsoft Copilot, refreshed in August 2026, and the consumer Deep Research feature was retired that same month. Both changes sit inside a fresh CNET primer that maps the assistant now spread across Windows, Office, Edge and GitHub.

Why it matters

Per the guide, the pricing ladder runs from a free chatbot with limits to Microsoft 365 Personal at $10 a month, Family at $13, Premium at $20 with Researcher and Analyst included, and a Pro tier at $100 for the highest limits. Personal-account chats and files, it adds, are no longer used to train foundation models, so the internet's old opt-out guides now describe a previous version. On the safety question, Ashique KhudaBukhsh, a software engineering professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, credits Microsoft's security standards while warning that data can bleed between systems as the tools span platforms.

Discuss: With consumer Deep Research retired and Researcher locked to the $20 and $100 tiers, is Microsoft simplifying Copilot or herding people up the price ladder?

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