Screenshot by Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET
In February, Microsoft entered the AI chatbot scene with the launch of Bing Chat, which has become a worthy rival to ChatGPT. Now, the company is giving Bing Chat a makeover that both increases its resemblance to ChatGPT and expands its capabilities.
On Wednesday, at Microsoft Ignite, the company announced that Bing Chat and Bing Chat for Enterprise will now be called Copilot.
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In addition to changing the name, the shift makes Bing Chat more of a standalone experience — like ChatGPT — with its own standalone web page. Users can still access Copilot from Bing and Windows; however, the standalone site makes it more accessible to everyone since it can be accessed from any browser without relying on Bing.
Regular users need to sign in or create a Microsoft account to access the chatbot, while Bing Chat Enterprise users can get the same commercial data protection with Copilot simply by signing in with their Microsoft Entra ID.
Like Bing Chat, Copilot remains a free experience with access to GPT-4 and DALLE-3 on its platform. By contrast, ChatGPT requires a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus to access either of those abilities from within its chatbot.
The user interface of Copilot is nearly identical to that of Bing Chat, with the only difference being the change in branding, which now reads “Copilot, your everyday AI companion.”
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Users can use Copilot the same way they would use Bing Chat, toggling between creative, balanced, and precise conversation styles, and asking for help with tasks such as writing, coding, shopping, and more.
To further expand Copilot’s abilities, Microsoft added support for OpenAI GPTs, a feature announced by OpenAI earlier this month, which allows users to create tailored versions of Copilot for specific tasks.
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Microsoft first released an AI product titled “Copilot” in September as an AI companion running across Microsoft’s most used applications and experiences, including Windows, Edge, Teams, and more.
This new Bing Chat rebranding reflects that Microsoft is moving towards having all its AI companion offerings grouped under the Copilot brand. Microsoft Copilot is the free-of-charge AI chatbot companion everyone can access, with other Copilots — such as Copilot for Microsoft 365, Security Copilot, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Sales — remaining paid services.
