Microsoft Copilot introduces GPT-4 Turbo for free: The free tier of Microsoft Copilot, the tech giant’s artificial intelligence assistant, has been upgraded. The OpenAI model that drives Copilot Pro, GPT-4 Turbo, is now accessible to users of Copilot for free.
Copilot must be in Creative or Precise mode to activate GPT-4 Turbo.
The GPT-4 Turbo variant will remain available to Copilot Pro subscribers. On Tuesday, Microsoft advertising and web services CEO Mikhail Parakhin said on X that subscribers might switch to previous devices.
“GPT-4 Turbo is now providing that experience for free Copilot users in Creative mode,” a Microsoft official said. “Copilot Pro users remain able to toggle GPT-4 Turbo on or off in Creative mode.”
GPT-4 Turbo can handle text-to-speech instructions and can be trained on data until April 2023. Its context window can hold 128,000 tokens, the most of any GPT variation. Individual phrases are tokens. Users can input more text into a model with a larger token capacity, improving context and results.
Microsoft launched Copilot a year ago to integrate AI across its platforms. The AI assistant is available online and in Microsoft 365, Windows 11, Bing, and Edge. Copilot Pro offers AI-powered Office features, priority access to new OpenAI models, and improved image-creation capabilities. It costs $20/month.
After OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot’s late 2022 launch, every tech business is exploring generative AI integration. Google is testing AI in its search engine, while Samsung released the Galaxy S24 with many AI capabilities this year. Apple is excited about “what’s in store for us for the remainder of the year” and sees a “huge opportunity” in generative AI but has not yet produced a product.
OpenAI, meanwhile, now permits users to develop AI applications for specific purposes. In addition, its AI chatbot competitors, including Claude from Anthropic and Google Gemini, continue to improve their products.
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Is GPT-4.5 Turbo forthcoming?
The reason Microsoft included GPT-4 Turbo in its free Copilot tier is unknown. Microsoft purposefully gave Copilot Pro a more advanced AI model to encourage premium upgrades. By offering an identical model in both the free and premium tiers, users who would only subscribe to Copilot Pro for the upgraded GPT feature may end up using the free version.
Microsoft’s decision may also indicate. Rumors suggest that OpenAI’s next model is GPT-4.5 Turbo. This week, Reddit users found an inaccurate OpenAI blog post claiming GPT-4.5 Turbo “exceeds GPT-4 Turbo in terms of speed, accuracy, and scalability,” despite the company’s tight position on future GPT versions.
That blog article was quickly removed from OpenAI, although it may signal a GPT model upgrade. If Microsoft wants to differentiate its Copilot versions by offering a better model in the paid tier, it may try incorporating GPT-4.5 Turbo into Copilot Pro.
