In February, Microsoft entered the AI chatbot scene by launching Bing Chat, which has become a worthy rival to ChatGPT. But now Microsoft is giving Bing Chat a new image, and increasing its resemblance to ChatGPT, while expanding its capabilities.
At the Microsoft Ignite conference on Wednesday, the company announced that Bing Chat and Bing Chat for Enterprise will now be called Copilot.
Besides the name change, this change makes Bing Chat a more standalone experience – like ChatGPT – with its own web page. Users can still access Copilot from Bing and Windows, however. But the standalone site makes it more accessible since it can be viewed from any browser without relying on Bing.
Like Bing Chat, Copilot is a free experience with access to GPT-4 and DALLE-3
Users must sign in or create a Microsoft account to access the chatbot. Bing Chat Enterprise users can benefit from the same commercial data protection as Copilot by simply logging in with their Microsoft Entra ID (ex Azure Active Directory).
Like Bing Chat, Copilot remains a free experience with access to GPT-4 and DALLE-3 on its platform. On the other hand, ChatGPT requires a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus to access any of these features from its chatbot.
Copilot’s user interface is almost identical to Bing Chat. The only difference is the rebranding, which now reads: “Copilot, your everyday AI companion.”
On the marketing side, the term Copilot becomes a real catch-all
Users can use Copilot in the same way as Bing Chat, switching between creative, balanced, and precise conversation styles, and asking for help with tasks like writing, coding, shopping, and more.
To further expand Copilot’s capabilities, Microsoft has added support for GPTs (custom GPTs), a feature announced by OpenAI earlier this month that allows users to create personalized versions of Copilot for specific tasks.
On the marketing side, the term Copilot tends to become a real catch-all. Microsoft first launched an AI product called “Copilot” in September as an AI companion that runs across Microsoft’s most-used apps and experiences, including Windows, Edge, Teams.
But this rebranding of Bing Chat reflects Microsoft’s desire to consolidate all of its AI companion offerings under the Copilot brand. Microsoft Copilot is the free companion chatbot that everyone has access to, with other Copilots – such as Copilot for Microsoft 365, Security Copilot, Copilot for Service and Copilot for Sales – remaining paid services.
Source: “ZDNet.com”