You'd think that collaborative chatting programs like Slack or Teams wouldn't need too many bells and whistles in order to be effective tools. Microsoft would beg to differ. The new Teams Premium tier not only includes the usual unlimited messages and better organizational tools, it's adding exclusive powers enabled by OpenAI's GPT 3.5 language model. The new tier will be $10 per month per user starting on June 30th, but you can get a cheaper preview for $7 until then. What does the fancy AI do?

Fresh off the heels of news that Microsoft is making a multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI, it's integrating the company's tech into more of its products and services. Microsoft has announced that Teams Premium is now broadly available. The service features large language models powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5, along with other tech geared toward making meetings "more intelligent, personalized and protected," Microsoft says. Teams Premium offers AI-generated chapters in PowerPoint Live and "personalized timeline markers for when you leave and join a meeting." Live translations in captions are currently available too.

At its Ignite conference this week, Microsoft announced updates heading to Teams, its ever-evolving videoconferencing and workplace collaboration app. New avatars are available, and more details were announced around Teams Premium, a paid set of Teams features including AI-generated tasks and meeting guides, which is set to arrive in December in preview. Teams Premium is an effort to simplify Teams pricing, which before was disparate across several tiers. Microsoft says it expects it to cost $10 per user per month, with official pricing to come once Teams Premium is generally available. That's higher than the lowest-cost Google Workspace plan, which costs $6 per user per month, but less expensive than Zoom Pro ($15 per user per month).

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