Microsoft’s Copilot Fires Up Competition Among LLMs With their offer

Exciting times!

Microsoft’s Copilot is available now and, with 30 free queries per month, it’s the perfect alternative to Chat GPT 4.

According to Wikipedia, Copilot uses the Microsoft Prometheus model, which was built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-4 LLM. This means it’s a more accurate companion than the free 3.5 version.

It’s a clever move by Microsoft, which is a strong OpenAI partner (basically the home of ChatGPT) and owns 49% of the company. It’s no big surprise that the company is leveraging its foot in the door and trying to draw users into the Microsoft realm with this generous free offer.

Copilot creating pretty little tables for me.

(I love it, but it doesn’t let me change the display language from German to English, so I love it a tiny bit less.)

If you want to have unlimited queries, you need to upgrade to Bing Chat Enterprise, which is a premium service that offers AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. Bing Chat Enterprise is available as a standalone for $5 per user per month and is included in Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5.

The Test

So I’ve tested the tool just like I would use ChatGPT or recently also Bard, e.g. for researching or summarising information, improving my writing and correcting spelling mistakes. Where the other big free LLMs were stubborn to shorten my copy and add words like “compelling” or “embrace”, Copilot allowed me to keep my personal language and just followed my instructions.

An interesting new feature I discovered is the plugins which are extensions… oh well, the tool can tell you much better:

My Takeaways

These are the things I found especially helpful:

Pros

• High accuracy

• Free access to ChatGPT 4

• Exporting option (pdf, word, text)

• Plugins library

• Displaying core query above the answer

If I want to be extra strict, I can also find some downsides:

Cons

• Microsoft login required

• Limited to 30 queries per month (free plan)

• No easy option to change display language

• Queries cannot be edited due to limited amount per month

My overall verdict

I’m happy to have a new kid on the block, as Chat GPT 3.5 and Bard were frustrating me recently. Competition, even if from the same home, will only benefit us users.

The accuracy of Copilot’s answers is very high and I appreciate features like the direct download option and displaying the essence of my query above the answer. So yes, I believe that Copilot is an amazing new tool and given that ChatGPT is only a bit more than a year old, I can’t wait what the development of LLMs has in store for us. The plugin feature might be a slight hint for us, but the possibilities seem endless.

Ironically, the only query Copilot didn’t answer correctly was this:

Copilot is also not immune to hallucinations.

Now I just have to weigh in on which 30 questions per month I’ll save for this super tool and hope that the big players will want to trump each other soon again and bring out an even better free tool.