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The vacations are speculated to be a time of peace, cheer and unplugging from work. However within the ruthless world of Huge Tech, there’s no time for relaxation when there’s a brand new product to hype.
Whereas we have been busy decking halls, baking cookies and arguing with kin, Microsoft was as much as some sneaky enterprise. The tech big quietly launched its new AI assistant app, Copilot, on Android and iOS, hoping nobody would discover amidst the seasonal distractions.
On the floor, Copilot appears an entire lot like Microsoft’s Bing Chat app, which debuted final yr to a lot fanfare. You’ll be able to chat with the app naturally, ask it questions, get it to draft emails or search the online for you. Normal AI assistant stuff in 2024.
However beneath the hood, Copilot is powered by a few of the most superior AI round — we’re speaking GPT-3.5 and even the brand new beefed up GPT-4 in sure modes. This isn’t your grandpa’s chatbot. Copilot can perceive context, observe advanced conversations, and generate hyper-realistic textual content and pictures utilizing instruments like DALL-E 3.
Having access to GPT-4 often prices a fairly penny — we’re speaking $20/month for us common Joe’s. However Microsoft is letting individuals chat with some of the highly effective AI programs on the market, all for zero {dollars}.
It is a huge deal. With Copilot, anybody with a telephone now has an AI assistant as succesful as what’s powering über-hyped apps like ChatGPT. And Microsoft simply slipped into our stockings with out most of us even noticing.
Whereas some might even see this quiet launch as Microsoft making an attempt to keep away from hype, the corporate probably simply needed to get Copilot on the market with out an excessive amount of fanfare. The vacations appeared like the right time to launch one thing new and let it converse for itself.
However make no mistake — Microsoft is aware of precisely what it’s doing right here. Whereas we have been roasting chestnuts, the corporate was making certainly one of its greatest AI performs but, placing superior generative fashions into thousands and thousands of arms.
What stays to be seen is whether or not the general public will react equally after they notice simply how highly effective Copilot is. Or will the vacation timing enable Microsoft to normalize this degree of AI with out triggering a backlash?
For now, Copilot remains to be no ChatGPT killer. It could’t chat conversationally by means of voice chat just like the hip new app from OpenAI. However by sneakily sliding it into app shops when nobody was trying, Microsoft has ensured will probably be a part of the AI assistant race in 2024 and past. The AI winter simply obtained much more fascinating.