Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, the national antitrust watchdog, opened a formal investigation on Friday into Microsoft over alleged unfair commercial practices linked to the recent price increase for its Microsoft 365 subscription. The regulator’s stated concern has two components. First: Microsoft integrated AI tools, specifically Copilot and Designer, into its Microsoft 365 offering without adequately informing consumers about the change. Second: consumers were automatically moved to a more expensive subscription plan unless they actively opted out, while receiving insufficient information to decide whether to renew their contracts. The AGCM described the practice as potentially aggressive because it “unduly limited consumers’ freedom of choice.” Microsoft did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The auto-opt-out mechanism is the specific conduct the AGCM probe centers on. Under the practice the regulator described, consumers who did not actively cancel or modify their subscription before the price increase took effect found themselves on a higher-tier, more expensive plan that bundled AI features they may not have requested, evaluated, or understood were being added. The requirement to opt out of something you were not informed you had been enrolled in is the consumer protection violation the regulator is characterizing as aggressive. Compared with a standard subscription renewal where the consumer confirms terms, the Microsoft 365 AI bundling as described requires the consumer to take action to avoid a price increase rather than to agree to one. That structural reversal of the informed consent default is what NewsTrackerToday picks up as the regulatory nerve the AGCM probe touches.
Sophie Leclerc, who covers the technology sector, reads the product and legal architecture: “Microsoft’s approach to deploying Copilot across its product suite has been aggressive in the literal sense: the AI features were added to existing products, priced into existing subscriptions, and activated for existing customers without the kind of affirmative consent process that consumer protection law in most jurisdictions expects. The commercial logic is clear – if you ask consumers whether they want to pay more for AI, many will say no. If you add the AI and adjust the price and ask them to opt out if they object, the conversion rate is substantially higher. The regulatory risk is that every jurisdiction that applies consumer protection law to the practice is going to reach a similar conclusion, because the facts are the same in Italy, Australia, and Switzerland.”
The Italy probe is the third concurrent regulatory action on the same Microsoft 365 AI bundling practice. Australia’s ACCC filed a lawsuit against Microsoft earlier in 2026, alleging the company hid cheaper “Classic” plans from consumers and moved approximately 2.7 million users to more expensive AI-integrated plans without adequate disclosure. Switzerland’s competition authority opened a separate investigation into significant Microsoft 365 license fee increases. Each investigation is conducted under its own national legal framework, but the underlying commercial conduct described is consistent across all three. The specific parallel is what NewsTrackerToday traces as the pattern the Italian probe extends: the same product decision, replicated across subscription markets globally, is generating regulatory action jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than a single coordinated EU-level response.
Isabella Moretti examines the commercial stakes: “Microsoft 365 has approximately 400 million paid seats globally. A price increase of even a few euros per user per month, multiplied across that subscriber base, represents billions in incremental annual revenue. That is the commercial incentive behind the bundling strategy. The regulatory risk, spread across multiple national investigations that are now running in parallel, creates a different kind of liability – not just fines in individual countries but the potential requirement to restructure the product offering in ways that would require explicit consumer consent for AI feature inclusion, which would substantially reduce the conversion rate the bundling strategy was designed to achieve.” The total exposure across Italy, Australia, and Switzerland stays relatively limited while each investigation runs independently, but the pattern is what NewsTrackerToday stays with.
Three things to watch as the Microsoft 365 regulatory cycle develops: whether the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act enforcement team treats the AI bundling practice as a separate matter from the AGCM’s consumer protection probe or opens its own investigation, which would bring EU-level regulatory authority to bear on the same conduct; whether Microsoft offers a modified subscription structure in one or more of the investigated markets that provides an explicit opt-in for AI features, since that kind of remedial offer often allows regulators to close investigations quickly; and whether the investigation in any jurisdiction reaches a finding of aggressive practice specifically, rather than inadequate disclosure, which would open the door to financial penalties beyond the corrective-measures framework that consumer protection regulators typically prefer. The AGCM probe is what News Tracker Today names as the one that, by landing in the EU’s largest Italian-speaking market, puts the regulatory pressure closest to Brussels.
