Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT within the fall of 2022, Microsoft has develop into one of many firm’s greatest 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 way of Bing.
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Customers can leverage Microsoft Copilot to ask questions, add photographs, and request AI-generated photographs, identical to they will with ChatGPT. Nonetheless, Copilot barely differs barely from its extra common competitor, ChatGPT. Here is tips on how to take advantage of it.
The way 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 screen and submit them to Copilot. You may also add images to your request or use the microphone perform for voice prompts.
You may ask Copilot limitless questions per day even with out signing in, however you will have a response restrict. For longer conversations and extra complicated capabilities, you need to sign up with a Microsoft or Github account. A Microsoft account may very well be an outlook.com or hotmail.com e mail handle and password or the login data you utilize for Microsoft providers, similar to Workplace, OneDrive, or Xbox.
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You may create a Microsoft account utilizing any e mail handle, Gmail and Yahoo! included.
Microsoft Copilot is programmed to supply a extra human-like reply to a question than a search engine. You probably have a private account, signing in provides you with entry to a few conversation-style choices for a way Copilot solutions your requests: inventive, balanced, and exact.
Every of those codecs is self-descriptive: selecting “extra inventive” provides you with solutions which can be unique and imaginative, and it will probably additionally generate photographs; “extra balanced” is analogous in tone to ChatGPT, an informative and pleasant chat with a human-like reply; and “extra exact” will render concise and simple responses.
You may set your language choice and nation by adjusting the settings within the hamburger menu within the higher proper nook. Signing in additionally helps you to add information together with your question.
Signing in to Copilot with a private account.
Screenshot by Radhika Rajkumar/ZDNET
You probably have an account by way of your office or college and select to sign up, you’ll 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, aid you prep for conferences, brainstorm concepts, arrange duties, and extra. It could leverage your organization’s inner information and comes with enhanced safety to make sure privateness when importing information.
The Microsoft Copilot bot differs barely from ChatGPT, ZDNET’s choose for the most well-liked AI chatbot. When you enter prompts within the conversations equally, the format of the solutions, the conversational model, and the person interface are all completely different.
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Here is a breakdown that can assist you get to know the brand new Microsoft Copilot window:
- Textual content space: The underside of the display screen has a textual content space the place you possibly can enter your prompts and questions for Copilot.
- Add a picture: Microsoft lets customers add a photograph for Copilot to course of utilizing AI, very similar to Google Lens and ChatGPT. Clicking on the picture icon helps you to add a picture.
- Microphone: If you happen to’d fairly use your system’s microphone as an alternative of your keyboard to offer Copilot your prompts, you possibly can 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 current 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 net, because of Bing. When replying to a immediate, Copilot will listing any sources and hyperlinks under the message bubble.
- Advised follow-up questions: After you get a response from Microsoft Copilot, it’ll generate strategies for various follow-up questions that you should utilize. For instance, if you happen to ask Copilot, “What coloration is the sky?” it could 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 will see a quantity that helps you rely 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 browse aloud buttons: When scanning the display screen, you will discover these buttons below 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 complicated 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 not too long ago.
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Copilot also can use AI to generate photographs (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 could additionally course of photographs 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 way of the Copilot.Microsoft.com web site or Bing. Customers want a Microsoft account or Entra ID to log in, or you should utilize it with out signing in and have restricted responses per matter.
Can you utilize the brand new Microsoft Copilot on cellular?
The Microsoft Copilot chatbot remains to be accessible by way of the Bing cellular app. You can begin a dialog on the net and scan a QR code to proceed it on the cellular app.
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This app offers a straight line to the Copilot chatbot, with the advantages of not having to undergo an internet site if you wish to use it and the flexibility so as to add widgets to your telephone’s house display screen.
Does Microsoft Copilot use ChatGPT?
Copilot doesn’t use ChatGPT, as ChatGPT isn’t itself an LLM. As an alternative, 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 flawed solutions?
Similar to ChatGPT and different giant language fashions, the brand new Copilot is liable to giving out misinformation. A lot of the output Copilot presents as solutions are drawn from on-line sources, and we all know we won’t consider every part we learn on-line.
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Equally, the Copilot chatbot can generate nonsensical solutions unrelated to the unique query, that are often known as hallucinations. It is essential 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, because of the big language mannequin (LLM) working behind the scenes. Intelligently formatting search outcomes into a solution to a particular query could make it simpler to seek 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 similar to ChatGPT. Each Copilot and ChatGPT, for instance, can generate textual content, similar to an essay or a poem, write code, or ask complicated 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 the moment, Microsoft is utilizing DALL-E, an AI picture generator from OpenAI. It is accessible inside Copilot — customers can provide Copilot a immediate to create photographs inside an current chat as an alternative of going to a separate web site.
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Is Microsoft Copilot free?
The Copilot chatbot is totally free. You should utilize the Copilot chatbot to ask questions, get assist with an issue, or search inspiration.
