The best ways to employ the recent Microsoft Copilot AI app

You’d be forgiven for losing track of what we’re doing with Microsoft’s AI chatbot, which, thanks to a partnership with OpenAI, is powered by the same technology you’ll find in ChatGPT and DALL-E. The bot, originally called Bing Chat and an extension of Microsoft’s search engine, has been renamed Copilot.

Copilot is quickly coming to Windows 11 and various other Microsoft products, and now we have a standalone app to employ. It’s basically a spin-off of the Bing app for iOS and Android, while retaining the core features of the AI ​​chatbot and some other Bing add-ons (such as messaging and shopping offers). Microsoft launched the Android app for the first timebut the iOS version shipped three days later.

If you’d like to test Copilot’s generative AI capabilities on your iPhone or Android device, here’s how to get started with the app and what you need to know about how it works.

Getting started with the Copilot application

You can download Copilot for free from Google Play Store on Android or iOS App Store and you can get started right after installing: you don’t even have to sign in to your Microsoft account, but if you don’t, you’ll be circumscribed to five queries per day, and won’t have access to some of the more advanced features (including image generation AI).

There are several options for interacting with the bot. You can tap one of the suggested prompts, type a question or tip in the text box at the bottom of the screen, or tap the microphone button (bottom right) and talk directly to Copilot (and receive voice responses in return). If you employ the voice option, the microphone icon changes to a keyboard icon when you want to return to text messages.

Copilot puts generative artificial intelligence at your fingertips.
Source: Lifehaker

You’ll also see a camera icon at the bottom of the interface – tap it and you can upload a photo from your phone (or take a recent one) for Copilot to analyze. For example, you can ask what is in the photo or create a recent image based on the image provided.

There are no settings to speak of in the app, but you can tap the three dots (top right) to start recent topics and configure the chatbot’s “sounds.” These sounds allow you to strike a balance between creativity and precision, so make your choice based on whether you want your answers to be as imaginative or as factual as possible (and as always, don’t believe everything the AI ​​tells you ).

Text generation

One of the main ways to employ Copilot – as with ChatGPT and Google Bard – is to generate text with it. If you want to get inventive with Copilot, you can ask it to write a poem on a topic of your choosing. You can even specify the form, style, tone and length of the poem if you want.

There are also more business applications of this technology: Copilot will create an email to your boss, a proposal to a client, or a concept summary. One way these generative AI bots can be useful is by explaining challenging topics in plain terms – you can also ask follow-up questions if you need further clarification or there’s a specific point you’re not sure about.

You can make the app generate text in various ways.
Source: Lifehaker

Copilot can also work with text pasted into it: you can, for example, ask for critical comments on your own text, or ask for a block of text to be concise or for more extravagant language. Please note that there is also a copy icon at the end of each answer, so if you want to copy the text and paste it elsewhere, you can do so.

Copilot’s huge advantage over ChatGPT is free access to GPT-4, the more powerful successor to GPT-3.5. To employ it, tap Utilize GPT-4 switch at the top of chats. Just remember that responses may be slightly slower and the results you get will generally be more natural and insightful because they are trained on more data.

Search, images and more

Copilot goes far beyond text generation. For example, you can ask him the same type of questions you typed into the search engine: ask him about ideas for party games, an itinerary to travel to a specific city, products he recommends, or advice on how to achieve a specific task. If Copilot searches for something on the Internet, you will see website citations at the end of the answers.

You can also try queries you can ask Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant, while keeping in mind that inaccuracies may creep in, even if Copilot references the Internet. The real employ of Copilot and other generative AI engines is to remember the word that’s on the tip of your tongue – if you describe the word you almost remember and put it into a sentence, Copilot will usually choose what you need.

Copilot can also create images and search the Internet.
Source: Lifehaker

An image generation feature is also built into Copilot, so you can simply ask it to create photos of anything you want using text prompts: cats in sizzling air balloons, an alien cityscape, an exploding coffee cup, or whatever you need. The image creation capabilities are the same as we’ve already seen in Bing, and you’ll be given four varieties to choose from – tap on any of them to see a larger preview.

Microsoft hasn’t mentioned its Copilot app yet, but from what I can see, when you log into the app, you can limit it to 30 data points per call. It’s possible that the limits will change over time as Microsoft manages demand for its powerful generative AI tools, which are free to employ, at least for now.