Technologies

Want More AI With Your Microsoft Office? It’s Arriving in a 365 Premium Version

Microsoft 365 Premium will cost $20 a month and adds Copilot AI features and apps to Office.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new version of Microsoft 365 that’s embedded from top to bottom with AI features — for twice the monthly price of its Personal plan.

Unlike the $10 Personal and $13 Family plans, however, Microsoft 365 Premium includes higher limits on AI features like image creation. It also adds access to some of the company’s Copilot tools including Researcher, Analyst, Photos Agent and Actions for up to six people at $20. Microsoft has been working features such as Agent Mode into its popular Office apps, but has not previously offered a full bundle of AI-driven software for people outside business settings. It also recently added the option to use Anthropic’s Claude AI models with Copilot.

ChatGPT’s 4o image generation has also been part of Copilot since earlier this year.

In an interesting wrinkle, Microsoft said in a blog post that the AI features will only be available to the subscription owner and can’t be shared. The Copilot features for Excel will also not work unless a file set to AutoSave and shared to OneDrive.

Microsoft has even updated its icons for apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint to «reflect the new era of AI.» The new app icons look more three-dimensional than previous iterations — a bit like gummi candies.

Those app icon changes will roll out to all 365 users over the next few weeks across desktop and mobile versions of the software.

What’s included in 365 Premium

So what’s new in the 365 Premium version? According to Microsoft the subscription includes:

Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and other 365 apps with Copilot built in.
Access to Researcher and Analyst, which was previously only available to commercial customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Those AI agent features will be incorporated into Word, PowerPoint and Excel sometime soon.
Higher usage limits for image generation and a new Voice feature that is also coming soon.
Access to other Copilot features including Podcasts, Deep Research, Vision and Actions.
A Photos Agent app.
1 TB of cloud storage.
An advanced version of Microsoft Defender.

What’s changing for everyone else

If you aren’t upgrading to 365 Premium, you’ll still get some new features and changes beyond the refreshed icons.

Those changes include:

Higher usage limits for Copilot features for Personal and Family plans.
Copilot Chat will be available in 365 apps.
Access to experimental AI features through the new Frontier program.
College students will still get access to 365 Personal for free for a year. The company is expanding that offer, which is good until Oct. 31, to most markets around the world.

Microsoft said it’s also adding ways for people to access their home documents from work, and vice-versa, securely with an account switcher option that will also work with the new Copilot apps including Researcher and Analyst.

According to Microsoft, its data suggests that 82% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work.

Technologies

Spotify Launches ‘About the Song’ Beta to Reveal Stories Behind the Music

The stories are told on swipeable cards as you listen to the song.

Did you know Chappell Roan drew inspiration for her hit song Pink Pony Club from The Pink Cadillac, the name of a hot-pink strip club in her Missouri hometown? Or that Fountains of Wayne’s song Stacy’s Mom was inspired by a confessed crush a friend had on the late co-founder Adam Schlesinger’s grandmother?

If you’re a fan of knowing juicy little tidbits about popular songs, you might find more trivia in About the Song, a new feature from streaming giant Spotify that’s kind of like the old VH1 show Pop-Up Video.

About the Song is available in the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia, initially for Spotify Premium members only. It’s only on certain songs, but it will likely keep rolling out to more music. Music facts are sourced from a variety of websites and summarized by AI, and appear below the song’s lyrics when you’re playing a particular song.

«Music fans know the feeling: A song stops you in your tracks, and you immediately want to know more. What inspired it, and what’s the meaning behind it? We believe that understanding the craft and context behind a song can deepen your connection to the music you love,» Spotify wrote in a blog post.

While this version of the feature is new, it’s not the first time Spotify has featured fun facts about the music it plays. The streaming giant partnered with Genius a decade ago for Behind the Lyrics, which included themed playlists with factoids and trivia about each song. Spotify kept this up for a few years before canceling due to multiple controversies, including Paramore’s Hayley Williams blasting Genius for using inaccurate and outdated information.

Spotify soon started testing its Storyline feature, which featured fun facts about songs in a limited capacity for some users, but was never released as a central feature.

About the Song is the latest in a long string of announcements from Spotify, including a Page Match feature that lets you seamlessly switch to an audiobook from a physical book, and an AI tool that creates playlists for you. Spotify also recently announced that it’ll start selling physical books.

How to use About the Song

If you’re a Spotify Premium user, the feature should be available the next time you listen to music on the app.

Start listening to any supported song.
Scroll down past the lyrics preview box to the About the Song box.
Swipe left and right to see more facts about the song.

I tried this with a few tracks, and was pleased to learn that it doesn’t just work for the most recent hits. Spotify’s card for Metallica’s 1986 song Master of Puppets notes the song’s surge in popularity after its cameo in a 2022 episode of Stranger Things. The second card discusses the band’s album art for Master of Puppets and how it was conceptualized.

To see how far support for the feature really went, I looked up a few tracks from off the beaten path, like NoFX’s The Decline and Ice Nine Kills’ Thank God It’s Friday. Spotify supported every track I personally checked.

There does appear to be a limit to the depth of the fun facts, which makes sense since not every song has a complicated story. For those songs, Spotify defaults to trivia about the album that features the music or an AI summary of the lyrics and what they might mean.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 7, #502

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 7, No. 502.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a fun batch of categories. The purple one requires you to find hidden words inside some of the grid words, but they’re not too obscure. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Golden Gate.

Green group hint: It’s «Shotime!»

Blue group hint: Same first name.

Purple group hint: Tweak a team name.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Bay Area teams.

Green group: Associated with Shohei Ohtani.

Blue group: Coaching Mikes.

Purple group: MLB teams, with the last letter changed.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is Bay Area teams. The four answers are 49ers, Giants, Sharks and Valkyries.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is associated with Shohei Ohtani. The four answers are Decoy, Dodgers, Japan and two-way.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is coaching Mikes. The four answers are Macdonald, McCarthy, Tomlin and Vrabel.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is MLB teams, with the last letter changed. The four answers are Angelo (Angels), Cuba (Cubs), redo (Reds) and twine (Twins).

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Feb. 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 7

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s Saturday, so it’s a long one, and a few of the clues are tricky. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.