Bing Chat is reborn as Copilot as Microsoft continues its AI push with a rebrand
Microsoft has announced a rebranding of Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise to Copilot as part of its "vision to bring Microsoft Copilot to everyone". There is now a lengthy list of products under the Copilot banner, including Microsoft Copilot and Copilot in Windows, but this latest rebrand feels a little odd.
Despite describing Bing as "our leading experience for the web" Microsoft has opted to ditch much of the Bing branding as it embraces Copilot more fully. The company has also revealed that Copilot will become generally available on December 1.
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Announcing the news, Microsoft says: "Our efforts to simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone starts with Bing, our leading experience for the web. Beginning today, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise are becoming Copilot, with commercial data protection enforced when any eligible user is signed in with Microsoft Entra ID. Over time, our vision is to expand Copilot to any Entra ID user at no additional cost -- so wherever and whenever an employee signs into Copilot with their work account they will get commercial data protection".
The company has also launched https://copilot.microsoft.com to expand the access options users have in relation to Copilot. The new site gives visitors a dedicated chat experience and home for Copilot, and Microsoft says Bing.com "will continue to be available for users wanting a combined search and chat experience".
In a wide-ranging announcement, Microsoft also says:
To help Copilot be even more powerful, versatile, and creative, we're announcing support for OpenAI GPTs. GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of Copilot for specific tasks. Combined with the previously announced support of OpenAI schema plugins, GPTs and plugins will open a new opportunity across citizen and professional developers, and provide users with experiences and interactions tailored to meet their needs.
The company is looking to expand the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot through the use of third-party plugins, and progress is being made here. Microsoft says that developers will soon be able to publish their plugins for Copilot through Microsoft Partner Center. To help ensure a trouble-free, high-quality user experience, Microsoft will be providing a testing environment "to test and improve chat responses for the range of scenarios a plugin serves".
More information is available here.