British antitrust regulator may soon investigate Microsoft over whether it misled Personal and Family customers when marketing subscription plans for its popular Microsoft 365 product, resulting in users overpaying for the service. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Wednesday that the probe would examine Microsoft\u2019s addition of its AI assistant, Copilot, to Microsoft 365 subscriptions.<\/p>\n
Reports suggest that Personal and Family customers were initially offered Copilot at no extra cost, but some later witnessed higher-priced subscriptions when renewing their plans.<\/p>\n
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The CMA said in a statement: \u201cThe investigation will examine whether customers were given key information about the plans and the difference in cost to understand the options available to them before making a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reacting to the planned investigation, a Microsoft spokesperson said, \u201cWe are reviewing the CMA\u2019s claims in detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s CMA had also launched an investigation into Microsoft\u2019s dominance in business software in May. Numerous competition investigations globally are targeting Microsoft\u2019s business software, cloud computing and AI partnerships.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Australia and Italy are also investigating Microsoft over the information provided to customers when they renewed their subscriptions.<\/p>\n
Back in June, Microsoft faced a legal battle after shareholders filed a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing the tech giant of fraud. The suit alleges that Microsoft inflated its stock price by concealing a slowdown in its crucial Azure cloud business while quietly pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed in a Seattle federal court by a Michigan-based pension fund. The shareholders alleged that Microsoft overhyped its AI advancements and AI assistant, Copilot, to drive investor optimism. At the same time, the lawsuit claims the company downplayed the financial risks associated with its AI investments and complex partnerships with technology companies.<\/p>\n
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The investors behind the lawsuit argue that Microsoft was not transparent about these internal bottlenecks. The pension fund claims that Microsoft misled the public into believing it was fully positioned to profit immediately from its AI investments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British antitrust regulator may soon investigate Microsoft over whether it misled Personal and Family customers when marketing subscription…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16007,62007,420,7853,15535,416,320,419,7852,62008],"class_list":["post-122935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-antitrust-law","tag-antitrust-regulator","tag-azure","tag-azure-copilot","tag-britain","tag-copilot","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-copilot","tag-microsoft-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}