Over the past year, Microsoft has probably been the world's most aggressive AI pusher, incorporating Copilot into almost every important product and service, whether it's Windows, Office 365, Azure, Edge browser, Teams (online meeting platform), Bing, SwiftKey keyboard, etc.
At the Ignite 2023 developer conference in mid-November, Microsoft CEO Nadella even said that Microsoft had become a "Copilot company."
But Microsoft's Copilot can go even further.
Recently, Microsoft quietly launched the Copilot standalone app on Google Play, allowing Android users to use the Copilot conversational bot directly without using the Bing app. Compared with before, the most direct difference is that the dialogue interface of Copilot is the app, and you don't need to click the Copilot icon at the bottom to enter.
图/ Google Play
At the moment, the iOS version of Copilot is still unavailable, but for sure, we won't have to wait long for this day. But before that, we can't avoid the question: why did Microsoft launch Copilot's standalone app in addition to Bing and Edge?
You don't have to open Bing first, just go straight to Copilot
When you open Copilot, the first thing that catches your eye is the dialogue interface, which uses GPT-3.5 Turbo by default, but provides a GPT-4 "switch".
Photo/Copilot
The difference between the two is that using GPT-4, while it will have better output performance, is also prone to longer queue times and completion times, in short, slower. But even without GPT-4, Copilot can provide pretty good answers.
In addition, Copilot will also provide some ideas to help you get started, which is actually a prompt for the user's reference, and then the detailed conversation between the user and Copilot, and click on the upper right corner to see the previous chat history and the option to create a new conversation.
Strictly speaking, the currently launched Copilot App is basically a "spin-off" of the original Copilot part on Bing, and the App design and functions are basically very similar to the mainstream ChatGPT, and both have access to the GPT-4 large model, can generate images through DALL-E 3, and all have the text generation capabilities we have experienced on the web version of ChatGPT.
The core difference is the one mentioned earlier – open the app and talk directly.
Bing 主界面，图/ Bing
However, Copilot currently only supports text, voice, and pictures in input, while ChatGPT has a rather critical one - file upload, which can summarize, re-ask, and re-create documents such as PDF, Word, and Excel, and can also upload audio files (with format restrictions) for transcription. However, it is almost certain that Copilot, which is based on GPT-4, will also support analysis and Q&A based on uploaded files in the future.
In addition to text and voice, it also supports taking photos, pictures and uploading files, and picture/ChatGPT
But at the same time, the spin-off of Copilot could also trigger a series of design changes.
Previously, as a companion function and service of Bing and other apps, it actually limited some of the design of Copilot, such as chat history and other important parts are hidden in the "hidden options" in the upper right corner, which is not as intuitive as ChatGPT; you can only take pictures to upload instead of selecting and uploading existing pictures; and the configurable options are too few and not flexible enough.
On the other hand, these are some of the things that can be improved in the future of the Copilot app, and perhaps one of the reasons why Microsoft chose to separate Copilot.
分拆 Copilot,微软为哪般?
Frankly, it's been a long time since I've opened the Bing app. Earlier this year, Microsoft was the first tech giant to take a clear stand out for generative AI applications, and it also launched Bing AI Chat (later renamed Copilot) on both Bing's web and app platforms. Not only that, but at that time, Microsoft also boldly provided Bing AI Chat with access to the GPT-4 large model.
Even now, Microsoft Copilot is the only conversational bot that offers GPT-4 for free use for a long time.
Photo/Microsoft
But then it was used less, on the one hand, because ChatGPT and more AI conversational bots have launched apps one after another, whether because of Xi or freshness, which has affected the frequency of opening Bing on mobile phones to use Copilot, not to mention that after the ChatGPT App is launched, subscribing to ChatGPT Plus has become quite easy.
On the other hand, it's Microsoft. Microsoft initially hoped to activate Bing's growth with built-in Copilot, but later data showed that Copilot still "couldn't support" Bing search. At the end of the day, more likely to be Copilot users of the Bing app this year.
On the contrary, Bing has also increased the cost of using Copilot to a certain extent, after all, there are still more steps before using Copilot each time.
Photo/Wenxin Yiyan App
In fact, a number of AI conversational robots, including ChatGPT and Wenxin Yiyan, open the app and directly enter the conversation interface, which is more in line with the needs of users on mobile terminals for the use of AI conversational robots anytime and anywhere. In other words, if Copilot can be the most popular app for users to ask questions, Bing, or the search business, will not be as important.
而微软分拆 Copilot 也早有动作。
At the Ignite 2023 conference in November, Microsoft announced that Bing Chat was renamed Copilot and launched an independent domain name for Copilot, which actually started Microsoft's "spin-off plan". Copilot also offers plugin support and a relatively different interface design under a separate domain name, which makes it different from Copilot on Bing almost from the start.
Photo/Copilot under a separate domain name
There is reason to believe that in the next Copilot App, we will also see more and more differences from Copilot on Bing, including the launch of the plug-in system, and even the ability to customize your own Copilot.
Write at the end
Needless to say, the shock that ChatGPT will bring to humans in 2023 is no longer in ecstasy, and after ChatGPT, we have also seen countless generative AI conversational bots, even if they can't compare to ChatGPT, they can often show far better performance than AI assistants on mobile phones.
However, for a user living in the mobile Internet, a generative AI conversational bot encapsulated in a mobile app is almost a smooth demand, so it is natural for large model manufacturers including OpenAI and Baidu to launch an independent conversational app.
However, these generative AI conversational bot apps are facing an impending impact.
Mobile phone manufacturers are actively promoting the implementation of large model technology on mobile phones, and the most direct and obvious entry point is the AI assistant that comes with the system. In the past, we used to say that the biggest problem of mobile AI assistants is that they "can't understand words", and large models can completely change the way and level of mobile AI assistants understand natural language.
Photo / OPPO
At the same time, benefiting from the underlying permissions and ecology, for example, we can directly operate smart home devices, we may be able to truly "follow our words", and even AI will automatically understand complex instructions in the conversation and execute them smoothly.
Although the popularity of the device-side large model is destined not to "kill" the cloud large model, with the deepening of the degree of access, application iteration and scenario understanding, it is likely to crowd out the user's use space, such as simple Q&A, summarization, copywriting generation and other needs will rely more on the system's ability to bring a large model, rather than the cloud model behind ChatGPT and Wenxin Yiyan.
For Microsoft Copilot, this is also a problem, but this is not just a separate Copilot can be solved, it requires the addition of a plug-in system and custom Copilot functions to continue to provide much better output quality. In a word, Microsoft needs to provide an experience that is far superior to on-device AI in terms of performance and functionality to offset the advantages of on-device AI in terms of privacy protection, personal data training, and more.
Of course, Microsoft's Copilot also has the unique advantage of using GPT-4's top-of-the-line large model, but it is also free to use. It can only be said that money can indeed do whatever you want.
CES (Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics Show) 2024 is about to be grandly opened, and Lei Technology will send a reporting team led by "One Tianming" to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA CES 2024 on-site reporting, so stay tuned.