The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court today, alleging that Microsoft Australia and its parent company made misleading representations to nearly 2.7 million users regarding the integration of Copilot, an AI assistant, into Microsoft 365 plans.
The regulator alleges that, starting at the end of October 2024, Microsoft informed users of auto-renewal plans that they would have to accept Copilot and pay a higher price or cancel their subscriptions, without disclosing the existence of a Classic plan option that retained existing features.
According to the complaint, users had to go through the cancellation process to discover the Classic plan, which allowed them to continue using existing services without Copilot at the original price. The ACCC alleges that Microsoft’s failure to adequately disclose this option constituted a potential consumer protection violation.