So Bing Chat is now “Co-Pilot”? It’s confusing, but here are 3 new changes. – LSB

Bing Chat is now a Copilot, according to an announcement during Microsoft Ignite 2023.

But is it more than just a name change?

Yes and no. You’re not alone in your confusion over what’s going on with Bing Chat — er, we mean Co-Pilot. But don’t worry, we figured it out for you.

What’s new with Bing Chat (now Copilot)?

There aren’t any major changed with the Bing Chat chatbot that became Copilot. “Improvement” is the better word to describe Microsoft’s dizzying actions. Let’s take a look at three tweaks Microsoft has implemented for its AI chatbot.

1. New home

Copilot, formerly Bing Chat, now has its own standalone web page. You can access it here: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

This means you no longer need to visit Bing before you can access Microsoft’s AI chat experience. You can simply visit the web page above — without Bing Search and other services cluttering your interaction with Copilot. In other words, it’s now much more like ChatGPT.

Interestingly, however, the link only seems to work on the desktop versions of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. When we tried to access it in Safari or any mobile browser (including Chrome), we got the following obstacle:

Not all platforms can access the new URL.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Bing Chat

2. Light makeover

Microsoft has made some visual changes to the rebranded AI chatbot, but they’re admittedly minor.

Here’s what the old Bing Chat looked like:

Chat on Bing
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

And here’s the rebranded version:

Bing Chat is now Copilot.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Left:
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

right:
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

While the tiles are smaller in the new variant, they include the same prompts: Code, Organize, Compare, Write, Create, Laugh, and Travel.

You will also be asked to select the conversation style you prefer: Creative, Balanced, or Precise. The only big change, of course, is the new name (i.e. Copilot) as well as the tagline: “Your daily AI companion.” Overall, the user interface is similar, although the theme color has changed from light blue to almost white.

Bing Chat, now Copilot, is still a free experience that gives users access to DALLE-3 and GPT-4. However, if you want to experience Copilot on platforms like Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, other popular productivity apps, you’ll need to pay a subscription fee for what Microsoft calls “Copilot for Microsoft 365.”

3. Better security for enterprise users

Copilot introduces free commercial data protection for customers who have Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, Business Standard and Business Premium accounts. That means “prompts and responses are not saved,” the message said. “Microsoft does not have direct access to it and it is not used to train the underlying models.”

So users who previously had a Bing Chat Enterprise account or paid for a Microsoft 365 license get the added benefit of more data protection.

This will be released officially on December 1st.

What has remained the same?

For non-paying users, Microsoft intends to include commercial data protection over time. But as far as free users are concerned, Copilot has the same data policy as the previous Bing Chat and keeps information from your conversations. So if you were a casual Bing Chat user who wasn’t subscribed, the only difference is the name and domain change. You still get access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 models, but you have to be careful about what information you share with the chatbot.

In short, free users aren’t much to write home about: Bing Chat is now called Copilot and has a new home. Whoop-dee-doo.