Microsoft Changes the Name of Bing Chat to Copilot in Order to Rival ChatGPT
Copilot is bringing everything up, even Bing.The AI-powered chatbot that the company launched on Bing earlier this year, Bing Chat, was renamed to Copilot in Bing today at Microsoft Ignite 2023. Concurrently, Bing Chat Enterprise, the high-end, corporate-focused version of the service, has also changed its name to Copilot.
Why does the name alter? Microsoft promises not to create confusion, even though the Copilot brand is currently shared by about a dozen products from the company.
Microsoft’s director of communications, Caitlin Roulston, emailed TechCrunch, “Renaming ‘Bing Chat Enterprise’ to ‘Copilot’ reflects our vision to create a unified Copilot experience for consumer and commercial customers.”
That is logical. It’s also possible that Bing Chat didn’t have much of an impact on Bing, in which case Microsoft is attempting to separate the technology from the search engine that introduced it. Six months after Bing Chat’s launch, according to a StatCounter report from August, Bing was unable to overtake Google in market share. Microsoft has refuted the report’s findings.
The name is not the only thing that’s new. When utilizing Copilot in Bing, users who log in with a corporate account—a Microsoft Entra ID, specifically—will begin to enjoy the advantage of “commercial data protection” on December 1. According to Roulston, this implies that Microsoft won’t have access to their data and that it won’t be saved or used to train AI models.
She continued, “On December 1st, Copilot will update the commercial terms and conditions to reflect that it’s a generally available product from Microsoft.” It will also take on Microsoft’s universal license terms for online services as part of this. Microsoft plans to gradually increase the number of Entra ID users who are eligible for Copilot with commercial data protection at no additional cost.
In addition to Copilot.Microsoft.com and Bing, Copilot is now available on Windows. It is free of charge with a variety of Microsoft enterprise subscription plans, including Microsoft 365 E, E5, Business Premium, and Business Standard. Beginning on December 1, Microsoft 365 F3 will come with Copilot. It will be available à la carte for $5 per month to all other customers.
