Copilot gets cheaper models — will quality drop to cut Microsoft's OpenAI bills
microsoft is replacing openai and anthropic models with cheaper in-house mai models in excel and outlook to lower costs. copilot users may receive weaker ai for the same subscription price as the company shifts spending away from third-party apis.
microsoft has begun integrating its in-house mai models into excel and outlook, processing tens of thousands of requests previously routed to partners like openai and anthropic. despite benchmarks showing mai models trail competitors like claude sonnet 4.6, microsoft prioritizes cost reduction, with mustafa suleymans stating the goal is to eliminate vendor fees. this strategy suggests a future billing model where cheaper proprietary models are the standard, and high-performance third-party models become paid extras. customers may therefore see stagnation in baseline copilot quality even as microsoft touts clean data licensing for its training sets.