Microsoft's New Copilot Upgrade Will Offer GPT-4 Turbo Even for Free Users

Microsoft's new Coplit AI assistant upgrade will offer GPT-4 Turbo even for free users, giving them full access to the feature.

In a status update on X, formerly known as Twitter, the tech giant revealed that Pro tier users will be given the option of choosing either the older standard GPT-4 model or the turbo version by using a built-in toggle. The older model still has its niche in being used for specialized access.

Microsoft Copilot Gets GPT-4 Turbo Upgrade

Microsoft revealed a new upgrade to its Copilot AI assistant that would add GPT-4 Turbo for its users, including those who are only on the free tier.
(Photo : Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP) (LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images)

Additionally, the new upgrade also gives the Pro tier added value without actually taking anything away from free tier users. GPT-4 Turbo is the updated version of the base model and is extremely popular for its speed, accuracy, and complex long-form task management.

The huge upgrade brings faster code generation, more insightful suggestions, and improved overall responsiveness, which all combine to translate to better productivity and smoother coding for users to take advantage of.

The update that benefits even free users is a good sign that Microsoft will work to ensure that users who do not have extra funds to maintain a paid premium subscription will still be able to benefit from its services, according to TechRadar.

This is particularly important because the tech giant needs to attract more users to switch over to Windows 11, which is where the full version of Copilot will be. Additionally, premium subscribers also get more flexibility with the Copilot AI assistant when it comes to language model upgrades.

The new upgrade comes as Microsoft had recently just announced a Copilot Chatbot builder that would allow Pro users to create custom task-specific chatbots based on their job role. This is interesting because it was created without any input from OpenAI.

This may have been done so that Microsoft could distance itself from the popular AI tool due to increased political scrutiny and various lawsuits. However, this is somewhat odd because the latest GPT update was added across the Copilot board.

Free Users Get New Features

The powerful GPT-4 Turbo was trained on data up to April 2023 and is also capable of handling text-to-speech prompts. Its context window can also accept up to 128,000 tokens, which is the highest amount offered in a GPT version, said CNET.

Tokens are pieces of words and the more tokens a model can handle, the more text a user can input into the model to provide additional context and get better results for their prompts. Microsoft first launched its AI assistant last year across all of its platforms.

Copilot AI is available online and is also integrated into Windows 11, the Bing search engine, Microsoft 365, and the Edge browser. The Pro tier costs users $20 every month and provides extra AI-powered features in Office apps. The paid version also gives priority access to new OpenAI models and enhanced image-creation tools.

The CEO of Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, Mikhail Parakhin, was asked about the hardest part of implementing GPT-4 Turbo into Copilot. He said that it was the fine-tuning of the model to ensure that user experience improved or at least stayed the same compared to when they used the base GPT-4 model, according to ZDNet.