Microsoft’s artificial intelligence companion, Copilot, Here comes Turbo. Copilot is moving from using the GPT-4 OpenAI model to the GPT-4 Turbo option, the company’s latest and greatest AI technology.
This is also not a benefit reserved for Copilot Pro:The users free Copilot version switches to GPT-4 Turbo. However, it will not be enabled by default. If you employ Copilot in “Balanced” mode, it will still be based on GPT-4. However, if you switch to “Precision” or “Artistic” mode, you will also switch to Turbo mode.
In practice, by using Turbo, you may notice a slight improvement in Copilot’s responses to your queries, but GPT-4 Turbo is not a significant upgrade over GPT-4. However OpenAI says is “more capable” and designed to curb “laziness” obvious for the model. (Recently users complained that GPT-4 does not always complete tasks and in such cases labels the model as “indolent”).
Additionally, GPT-4 Turbo has an expanded context window of up to 128,000 tokens, which means you can send longer hints that the bot will understand. (OpenAI says one token is worth about four words, so you could theoretically display GPT-4 Turbo with a maximum of 512,000 words.) Additionally, GPT-4 Turbo is trained on a dataset covering the period up to April 2023compared to the GPT-4 dataset ending in September 2021, so it should contain more up-to-date information when used offline. (Of course, when connected to the Internet, GPT-4 Turbo can always download the latest information.)
If you pay $20 per month for Copilot Pro, you’ll now have the option to upgrade to GPT-4 whenever you want. For free users, the only way to continue accessing GPT-4 is to employ Balanced Mode.
This free upgrade makes Copilot an even stronger candidate for meeting your generative AI needs. Microsoft is well-positioned here: the company has integrated Copilot with Windows, Microsoft 365, and Edge, and also offers a standalone app for Android AND iOS. For many people who just want a solid AI companion without having to pay for the privilege, Copilot’s free tier is quite enticing and covers many of the benefits you would get by paying $20 a month for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus. But I can guess when Microsoft is one of your biggest financierseverything will come out in the wash.
