Microsoft wants you to pay $300 per year for AI art in Word

Today, you can ask Microsoft Copilot to draw an AI-generated image of a strawberry pie for free, right from within Windows. But if you want to do the same thing in Microsoft Word, it will cost you at least 26 dollars per month. Does that make sense to you?

AI art has existed within Microsoft’s ecosystem since 2022, when Microsoft released its first beta of Microsoft Bing Image Creator. That later became Microsoft Designer, the design tool that Microsoft developed to compete against Canva. This week, Microsoft said that Designer’s AI art capabilities would roll out in several of its apps and services, including Photos, Word, and PowerPoint.

There’s a catch, though: Those capabilities don’t come for free. Microsoft 365, of course, requires a subscription: A Personal user must pay $6.99 per month or $69.99 annually, while Family users pay $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually. (PCWorld sells discounted Microsoft 365 subscriptions.) That subscription unlocks Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more, of course. But to generate AI art within Word, Microsoft charges an additional $20 per user per month for what it calls a Copilot Pro subscription.

That’s where it begins to get a little weird. Consider what Microsoft’s offering, as part of this GIF below: Microsoft is essentially saying that if you want to create an AI-generated illustration for your Word document, you can do so, right within Word. You can also add similar images as backgrounds, themes, or embedded images within PowerPoint.

But there’s still things that you can’t do: If you want to add an AI-generated banner to a document, for example, you can’t. That feature is coming soon. (Isn’t a banner just an elongated illustration?)

But you don’t even need a specialized Copilot subscription to generate AI art! You can tap the Win+C button on your PC, open Copilot, and have it generate an AI image for you. Than you can simply download it to your PC and import into Word, like so:

And if Copilot can’t do it, a number of other AI art generators can. (Adobe Photoshop plus Lightroom, which also has generative AI art capabilities via Firefly, costs $19.99 per month.)

Copilot Pro offers more than just these AI art capabilities, of course — Microsoft is offering access to premier LLMs, for example. But with any new subscription — including Microsoft 365! — Microsoft will have to continually add features and capabilities to justify you paying for it. Meanwhile, smart users will look for ways to perform those same tasks without paying extra.

Add it all up, and Microsoft wants you to pay over $300 per year (Microsoft 365 Personal + Copilot Pro) to plop a few AI-generated images of pastry inside your neighborhood newsletter. Is that something you’re willing to do? I don’t think it is.