Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT within the fall of 2022, Microsoft has develop into one of many firm’s largest traders. Microsoft leveraged these investments to superpower its personal search engine, Bing, with generative AI, infusing it with a new generative search expertise. The corporate additionally developed a aggressive AI chatbot — Microsoft Copilot — which is accessible as a standalone web site or by Bing.
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Customers can leverage Microsoft Copilot to ask questions, add pictures, and request AI-generated pictures, identical to they’ll with ChatGPT. Nonetheless, Copilot barely differs barely from its extra widespread competitor, ChatGPT. This is how you can profit from it.
Tips on how to use Microsoft Copilot
Go to Copilot.Microsoft.com (or obtain the app in your telephone). Enter your prompts into the textual content space on the backside of the display and submit them to Copilot. You may as well add pictures to your request or use the microphone perform for voice prompts.
You possibly can ask Copilot limitless questions per day even with out signing in, however you may have a response restrict. For longer conversations and extra advanced capabilities, you need to check in with a Microsoft or Github account. A Microsoft account could possibly be an outlook.com or hotmail.com electronic mail handle and password or the login data you employ for Microsoft companies, equivalent to Workplace, OneDrive, or Xbox.
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You possibly can create a Microsoft account utilizing any electronic mail handle, Gmail and Yahoo! included.
Microsoft Copilot is programmed to supply a extra human-like reply to a question than a search engine. When you’ve got a private account, signing in offers you entry to 3 conversation-style choices for the way Copilot solutions your requests: artistic, balanced, and exact.
Every of those codecs is self-descriptive: selecting “extra artistic” offers you solutions which are authentic and imaginative, and it could additionally generate pictures; “extra balanced” is comparable in tone to ChatGPT, an informative and pleasant chat with a human-like reply; and “extra exact” will render concise and easy responses.
You possibly can set your language choice and nation by adjusting the settings within the hamburger menu within the higher proper nook. Signing in additionally allows you to add recordsdata together with your question.
Signing in to Copilot with a private account.
Screenshot by Radhika Rajkumar/ZDNET
When you’ve got an account by your office or college and select to check in, you can toggle between two Copilot modes within the higher lefthand nook: Work and Internet.
Work is Copilot’s Enterprise arm, built-in with Microsoft 365 to perform as a productiveness assistant that may summarize paperwork, enable you prep for conferences, brainstorm concepts, manage duties, and extra. It will probably leverage your organization’s inside knowledge and comes with enhanced safety to make sure privateness when importing recordsdata.
The Microsoft Copilot bot differs barely from ChatGPT, ZDNET’s choose for the preferred AI chatbot. Whilst you enter prompts within the conversations equally, the format of the solutions, the conversational fashion, and the consumer interface are all completely different.
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This is a breakdown that can assist you get to know the brand new Microsoft Copilot window:
- Textual content space: The underside of the display has a textual content space the place you may enter your prompts and questions for Copilot.
- Add a picture: Microsoft lets customers add a photograph for Copilot to course of utilizing AI, very like Google Lens and ChatGPT. Clicking on the picture icon allows you to add a picture.
- Microphone: If you happen to’d moderately use your system’s microphone as a substitute of your keyboard to provide Copilot your prompts, you may click on on the microphone within the textual content space to speak to the AI chatbot.
- New matter: If you click on on New matter — a chat bubble icon subsequent to the textual content space with a plus signal — Copilot will wipe your present dialog and immediate you to maneuver on to a brand new one.
- Sources: Copilot is a conversational AI-powered search engine, and although it doesn’t provide you with solutions in a listing format as a search engine would, it does collect most of its responses from the online, due to Bing. When replying to a immediate, Copilot will listing any sources and hyperlinks beneath the message bubble.
- Instructed follow-up questions: After you get a response from Microsoft Copilot, it’ll generate options for various follow-up questions that you need to use. For instance, should you ask Copilot, “What colour is the sky?” it might recommend the follow-up questions, “Is the sky blue on different planets?” or “How does air pollution have an effect on the colour of the sky?”
- Immediate counter: When Copilot responds to a question inside a dialog, you may see a quantity that helps you depend what number of responses you have acquired. There is a restrict of 4 replies per matter for customers who aren’t signed in and no restrict for many who are signed in.
- Like, dislike, copy, export, share, and skim aloud buttons: When scanning the display, you may discover these buttons underneath every reply from Microsoft Copilot.
FAQs
What can Microsoft Copilot do?
Like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot can generate textual content conversationally, compose essays, create letters, summarize content material, write code, and reply advanced questions. It additionally has web entry, permitting it to supply up-to-date responses on present occasions — one thing the free model of ChatGPT lacked till lately.
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Copilot may also use AI to generate pictures (for signed-in Microsoft customers) inside the chat window. All you need to do is ask it to create a picture and describe what options you’d just like the picture to have, and it will generate a picture straight away. It will probably additionally course of pictures you add within the chat to inform you details about them, like figuring out plant species.
How can I entry Microsoft Copilot?
The Microsoft Copilot AI chatbot is accessible by the Copilot.Microsoft.com web site or Bing. Customers want a Microsoft account or Entra ID to log in, or you need to use it with out signing in and have restricted responses per matter.
Can you employ the brand new Microsoft Copilot on cell?
The Microsoft Copilot chatbot continues to be accessible by the Bing cell app. You can begin a dialog on the net and scan a QR code to proceed it on the cell app.
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This app gives a straight line to the Copilot chatbot, with the advantages of not having to undergo an internet site whenever you need to use it and the flexibility so as to add widgets to your telephone’s dwelling display.
Does Microsoft Copilot use ChatGPT?
Copilot doesn’t use ChatGPT, as ChatGPT is just not itself an LLM. As a substitute, Copilot makes use of a mannequin from OpenAI’s GPT-4 structure to carry out its capabilities. ChatGPT additionally makes use of a mannequin from that household of fashions; nevertheless, it makes use of essentially the most superior one–GPT-4o.
Does Microsoft Copilot give incorrect solutions?
Similar to ChatGPT and different massive language fashions, the brand new Copilot is vulnerable to giving out misinformation. A lot of the output Copilot provides as solutions are drawn from on-line sources, and we all know we won’t consider every thing we learn on-line.
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Equally, the Copilot chatbot can generate nonsensical solutions unrelated to the unique query, that are also called hallucinations. It is vital to take precautions when having conversations with AI chatbots, like by no means sharing private and personal data and by no means counting on them for medical or life-threatening data.
How is Microsoft Copilot completely different from a search engine?
In comparison with a search engine, the largest distinction between Copilot and different AI chatbots is the conversational tone in rendering search outcomes, due to the big language mannequin (LLM) working behind the scenes. Intelligently formatting search outcomes into a solution to a selected query could make it simpler to search out one thing on-line.
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Past the search capabilities that the usual Bing search engine already has, Copilot is a full-fledged AI chatbot that may do many issues much like instruments equivalent to ChatGPT. Each Copilot and ChatGPT, for instance, can generate textual content, equivalent to an essay or a poem, write code, or ask advanced questions and maintain a dialog with follow-up questions.
Does Microsoft have an AI picture creator?
Microsoft additionally debuted Bing Picture Creator as a part of its generative AI instruments. At present, Microsoft is utilizing DALL-E, an AI picture generator from OpenAI. It is accessible inside Copilot — customers may give Copilot a immediate to create pictures inside an present chat as a substitute of going to a separate web site.
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Is Microsoft Copilot free?
The Copilot chatbot is totally free. You should use the Copilot chatbot to ask questions, get assist with an issue, or search inspiration.