Microsoft has announced that Copilot – the AI chatbot formerly known as Bing Chat – will soon receive six impressive upgrades.
This set of improvements should make the Copilot chatbot significantly more powerful in many ways (outside and inside Windows 11).
So let's take a look at the upgrades themselves (mentioned in a Microsoft blog post) before we get into a discussion about what difference they're likely to make.
First, and most importantly, Copilot gets a new brain, or should we say an upgraded brain in the form of GPT-4 Turbo. That is the latest GPT model from OpenAI which makes several advancements in the sense that it is generally better and more accurate.
Another solid upgrade is an updated engine for Dall-E 3, the chatbot's image creation feature, which delivers higher quality results that better match what the user is asking for. This is currently in Copilot.
Third, Microsoft promises that Copilot will do a better job with image searches, delivering better results when you hurl a photo at the AI to learn more about it.
Another addition is Deep Search, which uses GPT-4 to “deliver optimized search results for complex topics,” as Microsoft puts it. What this means is that if you have a search for Copilot, it can provide a deeper search request to return better results. Additionally, if the terms of your search are vague and could potentially cover multiple topics, Deep Search will consider what those topics might be and provide suggestions to help you refine your search.
The fifth upgrade that Microsoft has planned is Code Interpreter, which, as the name suggests, will help perform complex tasks including coding, data analysis, and so on. That's not something the average user will benefit from, but of course some do.
Finally, Copilot in Microsoft's Edge browser will soon have a rewrite feature (for inline text composition). This allows you to select text on a website and have the AI rewrite it for you.
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There have been some really useful changes here. Getting GPT-4 Turbo is an upgrade (from GPT-4) that many Copilot users have been asking for, and Microsoft tells us it's now being tested with select users. (We've heard before that there were still a few kinks to be worked out, so presumably that's what's going on at the moment).
GPT-4 Turbo will be rolling out in the “coming weeks”, so with any luck it should be here soon enough, and you'll be able to see the difference it makes for you in terms of a higher level of accuracy for the chatbot when respond to your questions.
It's great to see Dall-E 3 getting an upgrade too, because honestly, it's already an excellent graphics creation engine. (Remember the rush to use the feature when it first launched because of the impressive results shared online).
The improvements in search queries, both Deep Search capabilities and refined image search, will also combine with the above upgrades to make Copilot much better on several fronts. (Although we are somewhat concerned about the potential for abuse with that inline rewrite feature for Edge).
All this forward momentum for Copilot comes as we just heard the news that Google has delayed its progress on the AI front, pushing back some major launches to early 2024. Microsoft isn't hanging around when it comes to Copilot, that is Certainly. and Google must find a balance to keep up, without pushing so hard that mistakes are made.