New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers

Microsoft's GitHub this week said paying GitHub Copilot customers will now face monthly limits on certain types of high-powered AI requests, and will have to pay more if they want to surpass those limits.

Welcome to the AI industry's latest variation on bill shock, made famous in the telecom industry and later refined for the cloud computing industry.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced the changes back in April. After all, someone has to pay for all the expensive AI model training, either directly or through a subscription upgrade undertaken to avoid service interruption.

Customers with Copilot Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans can still make unlimited requests at a limited rate to OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o for agent mode, chat interactions, and code completions.

But those seeking to do more complicated tasks with AI now must consider the number of so-called "premium requests" that will be ...