Since the release of ChatGPT last year, the development of new AI large language models has been fast and furious. It’s been hard keeping up with all the new tools. I’ve been using Open AI’s ChatGPT 4 for a while now and have recently added Google Bard and Lexis+ AI to my go-to list.
Now there’s another LLM that’s made the list: Microsoft CoPilot. And better yet, it’s free. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s looking like I’ll soon be dropping my $20 per month subscription to ChatGPT.
According to ZDNet, nine months after Microsoft launched its popular AI chatbot Bing Chat, the company rebranded it with a new name — Copilot. Now Microsoft is introducing new features to Copilot that optimize the AI’s performance even further.
The most notable upgrade is that Copilot will soon be able to use OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4 Turbo, to generate responses. OpenAI has yet to infuse ChatGPT with GPT-4 Turbo, so Microsoft’s move to include it in Copilot is significant.
Another significant Copilot upgrade is that it will now have an updated version of DALL-E 3, allowing for the generation of images that are higher quality and more accurate.
Microsoft recently announced that Copilot with commercial data protection will be available to all faculty and higher education students ages 18 and above. That means when they are signed in with their campus id, their user and organizational data are protected and their prompts and responses are not saved or used to train the underlying large language models. This appears to be a path for protected, equitable access to the latest large language model tools for students.
To access Microsoft Copilot, go to https://copilot.microsoft.com/. University faculty and students should log in using their school account.
Don’t confuse the free MS CoPilot for MS CoPilot for Microsoft 365 which integrates AI to connect your Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams, Loop, and other Microsoft 365 apps. This looks especially intriguing for productivity improvement but at $30 per month is definitely not free.