Cowork just got cheaper. Time to get in.
Today I want to convince you to get started with Cowork if you haven't already.
And if you’ve already started, I want to give you an idea of where it's going, because there's a lot happening regardless of the product you're using.
The two big things to be aware of:
in Copilot, the price of Cowork is dropping rapidly.
in Claude, Cowork is merging with chat, so there'll only be one.
The cost is dropping
You've probably seen me show this example before. I asked Copilot Cowork to take a folder of receipts, rename all of them nicely with year, month and date, and create a register for me in a spreadsheet.
I did it in August and it cost me 265 credits. That's US$2.65.
I did it again today. Same task, exactly the same prompt, same files, and it cost 74 credits. That's 74 cents. 70% less.
I looked at the details of what it did, and it just worked more efficiently. In August it tried a few files, then it failed, then it tried again, and then it compared. This time it renamed all the files in one batch.
Some people held back on Cowork in Copilot because of the extra cost, because credits go fast. This is the answer to that.
Where Copilot Cowork is heading
In Copilot Cowork we hear about the mysterious Cowork 1 model.
What’s that?
When Copilot Cowork became generally available, Microsoft told us it runs Anthropic's models, Claude.
Some of us already have access to GPT models as well (in the Frontier program)
And something called Cowork 1 is coming soon.
Microsoft say that Cowork 1 "will deliver optimal cost, quality, and enterprise-grade use, including removing model bias."
They haven't told us a lot more about Cowork 1.
It is believed to be a new Microsoft internal model. There is speculation that it’s built on DeepSeek (because of the extremely low cost, and Microsoft’s mention of ‘removing model bias’, which sounds like removing Chinese government censorship on DeepSeek).
My guess? Once Microsoft runs Cowork on its own model, it won't have to pay Anthropic every time we use it and we will get some Cowork capacity included in Copilot Premium.
And over in Claude world
Claude announced that Cowork and chat are becoming one.
We always had to choose in Claude whether to work in chat or in Cowork, but Cowork is just more capable than chat.
So why do we need two options?
The choice is disappearing and becomes just Claude.
Why does that matter if you're not on Claude?
Because Claude has been in the lead recently, so it tells us what the others are going to do too.
Claude released Cowork in January.
Microsoft followed very quickly with Copilot Cowork - March for early access and June in general availability
ChatGPT released theirs (they call it Work) in July (after Copilot!).
So the fact that Claude is merging them tells us the others will probably do the same, and that Microsoft is going to have to figure out (and probably already has a plan for) their pricing structure.
So what do we need to do?
We're seeing two big trends:
The cost of Cowork is dropping fast: in Copilot that's actual dollars, and in Claude it's getting more efficient, so we use up less of our usage limits.
Cowork is becoming the default way of working.
If you're not using it yet, there are no more reasons not to, cost or otherwise. So it’s time to get in.
How?
If you're on Claude, get Claude Desktop and connect some of your connectors (like Microsoft 365). You can use Cowork in the browser too, but in the desktop app it can work with your files locally, which is very, very powerful.
If you're on Copilot, get your Microsoft tenant admin to enable Cowork for you and to set up some budget so you can start using it.
If you're on ChatGPT, the same, with Work.
Then start having fun with the use cases that bring people so much joy: organising a folder, renaming files, sorting into subfolders, creating a register of everything in a folder, tidying up bank statements. Cowork is very powerful with long PDFs, much better than old-fashioned chat. Supplier invoices: register them and compare them to your purchase orders. Tax documents, payslips, your inbox.
Imagine your engagement letters folder. Cowork finds all your engagement letters across all your clients, lists them, and tells you the status of each, whether each one got signed and when, and whether it has a clause covering the use of AI. Then it drafts new ones for you to send.
Wow.
So whatever app you're on, Copilot, Claude or even ChatGPT, get in there with Cowork.
It's how we're going to work with AI, starting tomorrow.
--
Inbal Rodnay
Guiding Firms in AI Adoption and Automation
Keynote speaker | AI Workshops | Executive briefings | The Tech Savvy Firm
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