Microsoft Lets Free Copilot AI Users Use Voice Conversation and Complex Query Tools

If you’re a Copilot user, you now have more artificial intelligence tools at your fingertips: Microsoft is giving unlimited free access to Voice and Think Deeper on its free tier. Voice lets you have a conversation with the AI tool using verbal commands, while Think Deeper allows for more complex questions than regular Copilot, as it has more advanced reasoning powered by OpenAI’s o1 model.

Copilot, launched in 2022, is Microsoft’s entry in the increasingly competitive world of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. As tech companies compete against each other and new Chinese entrant DeepSeek for a foothold, they continue releasing new AI-powered features and tools — and are now providing more for free after DeepSeek launched an entirely free service. These Voice and Think Deeper features are variations on interface, giving users different ways to engage with Microsoft’s AI offerings.

CNET Senior Editor and computing expert Lori Grunin tested Think Deeper out on Tuesday, confirming that while it’s free, “at one point it stopped providing new answers to refined queries and a ‘Get the full Copilot experience’ popup and tried to get me to sign in.”

Grunin added that it didn’t obey specific parameters during her test, either.

I gave Voice a go without signing into a Copilot account, and it greeted me like a voice assistant, letting me know I can chat to it “just like with a mate” (it had a male, British accent, though it noted I could change how it sounded in the settings) and asking me my name. 

Its follow-up question, after mispronouncing my name, was the ever-generic: “What’s on your mind?” I asked it the weather in my city, and it gave me up-to-date information as well as a recommendation to get “out and about” in the unseasonably sunny, warm weather.

But it then told me I only had 2 minutes remaining of Voice time. So you really do have to create an account and sign in to get that unlimited access announced today. (When I closed the voice chat, Copilot gave me a transcript of our call.)

You can become a Copilot user for free — just sign up using a Microsoft email address. The free version limits what features you have access to, slows down your responses after 15 “boosts” per day and only gives you access to the latest models during non-peak times. There’s a paid tier called Copilot Pro ($20/month) and an enterprise version that starts at $30 per user per month.

Some of Microsoft’s suggestions include using Voice for practicing a new language, asking it to help you practice for a job interview or asking it out loud for cooking advice or recipe steps while your hands are busy in the kitchen — kind of like a voice assistant.

For Think Deeper, Microsoft says some of the more complex issues it can help you with are comparing electric vehicles, asking it for home renovation advice and checking for the pros and cons of buying a generator for outages.

As with all AI tools, you should be wary of what it advises you to do, however, and CNET recommends double checking everything it comes back with — whether it’s on-the-fly cooking advice that may lead you astray thanks to a hallucination, or coming up with a savings plan that makes no financial sense. 

You also shouldn’t ever tell an AI chatbot any of your personal details, including financial information, lest a data breach leak it to malefactors. 

That said, our CNET review found Copilot to be one of the better AI tools, giving it a 7/10 as it generally provides accurate and relevant information. Senior writer Imad Khan does recommend Anthropic’s Claude as the best AI chatbot, however, saying it “does a consistent job and goes further than what’s coming out of Google, Microsoft, Perplexity and OpenAI at the free tier.”

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