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It’s no secret that Microsoft has been trying to get hundreds of millions of customers to try out its new AI-powered assistant, Copilot, for the past year. It’s added it to its Bing search engine, Edge browser, and even Windows 11, and it’s also free to use. The company also offers a “Pro” version for $20 a month that uses the latest “turbo” AI model from OpenAI, so it has access to more recent data and can handle larger text prompts. Now, Microsoft is letting people who use the free version of Copilot use the “turbo” model, a sweet freebie that will undoubtedly result in fewer people paying for the pro version.
Microsoft announced that it would add GPT -4 Turbo to the free version of Copilot on Twitter/X, causing people to ask, “What’s the catch?” There doesn’t seem to be one, though; it’s just a free upgrade that could entice more people to give Copilot a spin. The company still offers the same GPT-4 Turbo model to its Pro customers, which is probably frustrating for this group since they’re coughing up a chunk of dough each month for the privilege of using it. According to Cnet, GPT-4 Turbo has been trained using data up to April 2023, whereas GPT-4 ended its data collection in September 2021. This allows the newer model to provide more up-to-date results in queries.
Additionally, GPT-4 Turbo can also handle longer text prompts. Per query, it can accept up to 128,000 tokens, which are parts of words. Its predecessor, GPT-4, can only handle around 8,000 tokens, so you could theoretically give it a massive prompt for increased accuracy in its results. To use GPT-4 Turbo, select Creative or Precise modes instead of the default, called “balanced.”
Whereas sometimes AI artwork can get a bit wonky, we asked GPT-4 Turbo for a lion riding a hippo through the Grand Canyon and got this. We have no idea why it added a bald eagle to the photo, but we like it.
Credit: Microsoft Copilot
The decision to upgrade users to the tier that used to cost money is certainly an unexpected move by Microsoft. While it might enrage existing customers, Cnet thinks their anger could be short-lived as GPT-4 Turbo 4.5 might be approaching. The developer of these GPT models, OpenAI, apparently published a blog announcing a next-generation model by mistake. This new model, Turbo 4.5, was described as faster and more accurate than GPT-4 Turbo, but the blog was eventually deleted. It would make sense for Microsoft to wait for the 4.5 version to arrive before announcing it offered Turbo for free, so perhaps 4.5 will be announced any day now.