India, Oct. 27 -- Australia's competition watchdog has accused Microsoft of misleading approximately 2.7 million customers into paying for its AI assistant Copilot.

The ACCC alleges that since 31 October 2024, Microsoft has told subscribers of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans with auto-renewal enabled that to maintain their subscription they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or, alternatively, cancel their subscription.

Microsoft's communication with subscribers did not refer to the existence of the "Classic" plans, and the only way subscribers could access them was to begin the process of cancelling their subscription. This involved navigating to the subscriptions section of their Micro...