Italy opens an antitrust probe into Microsoft 365’s AI price rise

Italy's competition authority opened an antitrust probe into Microsoft over alleged unfair commercial practices tied to a price increase on Microsoft 365 subscriptions, claiming customers were automatically moved to a pricier plan bundled with AI tools Copilot and Designer without adequate information or a real chance to opt out. The investigation focuses on the opt-out architecture rather than the price itself, and the price increase takes effect July 1, 2026.

The regulator says customers were moved to a pricier Copilot-bundled plan unless they actively opted out, with too little information to choose. The mechanics of a price rise can matter as much as the price itself, which is the question Italy’s competition authority has now decided to examine. On 26 June, the regulator said it had opened an investigation into Microsoft over alleged unfair commercial practices tied to a price increase on its Microsoft 365 subscription. The opening of a probe is not a finding of wrongdoing, but it is the start of an in-depth review. The complaint is less about the higher price than about how customers arrived at it. According to the authority’s statement https://en.agcm.it/en/media/press-releases/2026/6/PS13129 , Microsoft did not adequately inform consumers that Microsoft 365 had been integrated with its AI tools, Copilot and Designer. Customers were automatically moved to a more expensive plan unless they actively opted out, the regulator said, and were given insufficient information to decide whether to renew. The legal hook is the design of that default. The watchdog said the practice could be considered aggressive because it unduly limited consumers’ freedom of choice, language that signals the case will turn on the opt-out architecture rather than the headline number. An automatic upgrade that requires the customer to notice it and decline it is a pattern regulators across Europe have grown less willing to wave through. The pricing itself is real and arriving soon. Microsoft’s 365 increases take effect from 1 July 2026 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-m365-packaging-pricing-updates-faq , with the AI features folded into the bundle. The probe concerns how that change was communicated, not whether Microsoft may charge more for a product it has expanded. The case sits at an intersection regulators have been circling for a while: the bundling of AI features into established software, and the pricing that comes with it. Microsoft has folded Copilot into product after product, even as data showed only a small fraction of users were paying for it https://thenextweb.com/news/only-3-3-per-cent-of-users-pay-for-copilot-so-microsoft-is-finally-making-it-optional . The Italian authority’s framing, that the integration was insufficiently disclosed and the upgrade effectively automatic, turns a pricing dispute into a consumer-consent dispute, which is a harder thing for a company to wave away. The adoption problem behind the bundling is well documented. Microsoft has spent the past year trying to convert free Copilot Chat users into paying ones, a paying-customer problem it carried into its Build conference https://thenextweb.com/news/microsoft-build-2026-ai-tools-copilot , and folding the AI into a higher-priced default plan is one way to lift those numbers. Microsoft sits under antitrust scrutiny on more than one front. The company faces ongoing examination from the US Federal Trade Commission, and the Italian case adds a European consumer-protection dimension to a busy regulatory year. Even Microsoft’s own terms have described Copilot output as ‘entertainment only’ https://thenextweb.com/news/microsoft-copilot-entertainment-only-disclaimer-adoption in places, a detail that sits awkwardly beside a price rise justified by the feature. What the authority decides will hinge on a narrow question. Did customers understand what they were being signed up for, and were they given a real chance to say no. Microsoft had not issued a detailed public response at the time the probe was announced, and the company is entitled to make its case as the review proceeds. The authority has been explicit that opening an investigation is a procedural step rather than a conclusion. The same pressure on Copilot economics recently pushed Microsoft to rethink parts of its enterprise AI strategy https://thenextweb.com/news/microsoft-claude-code-retreat-ai-cost . Cases of this kind often run for months and can end in a settlement, a commitment to change the disclosure, or no finding at all. The next step is procedural. The authority will gather evidence and Microsoft will respond, with no fixed deadline disclosed. For now the case is an investigation, not a verdict, and the price rise proceeds on schedule regardless. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.