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Why is Microsoft Asking for a Disappointing $20 for Its New Edge AI Feature?
Your web browser is a window to the world. You use it for work, school, shopping, and fun. Sometimes, you might have dozens of tabs open at once. It can be hard to keep track of everything. What if your browser could help you organize this chaos? Microsoft is thinking about this problem.
They are testing a new tool inside the Microsoft Edge browser called ‘Journeys.’ This tool uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to watch how you browse the web. It then groups your activity into neat summaries. The idea sounds helpful. But there is a twist. This feature might not be free.
What Exactly is This ‘Journeys’ Feature?
Think of Journeys as a smart assistant that lives in your browser. Its main job is to help you remember and organize what you do online. Let’s say you are planning a birthday party. You search for cake recipes. You look at different websites for decorations. You also have tabs open for online invitation makers. Your browser history for that day is a long, mixed-up list.
This is where Journeys steps in. It sees that all these different web pages are related to one project: planning a birthday party. The AI then bundles them together. It creates something like a digital scrapbook for your project. This scrapbook is called a “journey.” Later, when you want to continue your planning, you don’t have to search for each website again.
You can just open the “birthday party” journey and all your related tabs, searches, and pages are right there. Microsoft says this tool will turn your web pages and search history into useful summaries. You might see these as interactive cards on your New Tab page, making it easy to pick up where you left off. It’s a way to group your work automatically so you can easily return to it.
The Cost: A $20 Monthly Question Mark
Here is the part that might make you pause. This helpful Journeys feature will likely require a subscription to Copilot Pro. The cost for Copilot Pro is $20 each month. This makes things complicated. Are you paying $20 just to have your browser tabs organized? Not exactly.
The $20 fee for Copilot Pro is for a larger package of AI tools from Microsoft. Subscribing gives you more AI credits to use in other programs. These credits work in Microsoft Paint, Notepad, Word, PowerPoint, and more. For example, you could use AI to help you write a report in Word or create a presentation in PowerPoint. So, the decision is not just about the Journeys feature in Edge. It is about whether you will use the other AI tools that come with the subscription. Microsoft may be hoping that a useful feature like Journeys will encourage more people to buy the whole Copilot Pro package.
Is Your Information Safe and Private?
Whenever a tool wants to look at your browsing activity, it is smart to ask about privacy. Where does your information go? Who gets to see it? These are important questions. Microsoft seems to understand this concern.
The good news is that the AI for Journeys is designed to work directly on your computer. Your browsing history and the summaries it creates are not sent to Microsoft’s servers in the cloud. A note in the Edge settings clearly states, “your data is securely stored on your device and is never used for AI training or advertising.”
This is possible because Journeys uses a special kind of AI called a small language model. The model is named Phi-4. Think of it as a mini AI brain that is powerful enough to do its job but small enough to run on your own device.
Because everything happens locally, your privacy is much better protected. Your browsing history is already stored on your computer, so Journeys just adds a new way to look at it. This focus on on-device processing is a significant point for anyone worried about data privacy.
Is This New Tool Genuinely Useful?
Now for the most important question: Is the Journeys feature worth it? The answer depends on how you use the internet.
- For busy people, it could be a great help. If you are a student, a researcher, or a project manager, you probably juggle many different topics at once. Journeys could save you a lot of time and frustration. It can keep your research for a history paper separate from your search for a new laptop. This automatic organization can help you stay focused and find things quickly.
- For casual users, it might be too much. If you mostly use your browser to check email, read news, and watch videos, you might not need this level of organization. Simple bookmarks and your browser history might be enough for you. In that case, paying $20 a month for a feature you rarely use doesn’t make sense.
It is also important to remember that this feature is part of a larger subscription. If you already use Microsoft apps like Word and PowerPoint a lot, the extra AI features in those programs might make the Copilot Pro subscription a good value for you. But if you only want the Journeys tool, the price might feel steep.
How You Can Test It Today
If you are curious and like to try new things, you can test the Journeys feature before it is officially released. You will need to use a special version of the browser called Microsoft Edge Canary. This is a test version, so it might have bugs.
Here are the steps:
- Install Microsoft Edge Canary from the official website.
- Open the browser and type edge://flags in the address bar.
- In the search box on that page, type ‘Journeys.’
- Find the Journeys feature in the list and switch it on.
- Restart the browser.
After restarting, you should find the Journeys settings under the “AI innovations” section in Microsoft Edge’s main settings. Right now, the feature does not fully work for everyone, but it gives you a peek at what is coming.
Ultimately, Microsoft’s Journeys is an interesting idea. It tries to solve a common problem: the messy state of our online lives. Keeping the AI on your device is a smart move for privacy. However, linking it to a $20 monthly subscription makes it a feature you have to think carefully about. It asks you to decide how much that organization is truly worth to you.