Are you a ChatGPT user, or do you prefer Copilot? When it comes to answering questions, completing tasks or writing a document, both of these apps can do it; but which is better? We’ve taken a look at the most popular AI chatbots to find out which comes out on top.
ChatGPT: a great everyday option
If you’re looking for an AI to use casually everyday, ChatGPT is a great option. The user interface is accessible, and it’s simple to use even if you’ve never used an AI before. Unlike Copilot, where the landing page can feel a little cluttered, ChatGPT is clean and minimalist. You can start a new chat, or access previous chats with ChatGPT by checking your history.
For tasks like writing and coding, the AI is more than capable. You can give it a list of ingredients and it will generate a meal for you, or a menu, or an entire week’s worth of meal planning if you like. If you’re struggling with Excel, it can write a complex formula for you from a single prompt. ChatGPT can solve web development problems, and find errors in code that you’ve written. Whether it’s cleaning rotas or cover letters, ChatGPT can get things done for you in seconds.
ChatGPT is also diversifying, with ChatGPT and community creators developing really specific apps. Click Explore GPT’s in the left hand menu and, you’ll find a number of different versions of ChatGPT; Landing Page Creator to help you generate the perfect landing page for your website, Video GPT to create AI videos for social media, Planty to help you take better care of your plants, and Colouring Book Hero to create custom colouring book pages.
ChatGPT has recently added a feature where you can upload a document to a query, or connect it to your Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. It can then scan through your file and amend a document to make it more clear, or find a piece of information within an essay. It should be noted that ChatGPT states that they, ‘may use content submitted…to improve model performance’ and this includes files that are uploaded - unless you’re using API or ChatGPT Enterprise.
Copilot: the better option for businesses
Unlike ChatGPT, Copilot is a grounded service. This means that the AI has access to your business data and can use that information to answer questions that ChatGPT would struggle with. As Copilot is integrated with Microsoft 365, it has access to all of Microsoft 365’s applications, including Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel.
For business users, Copilot can summarise an email thread between colleagues, or messages from a specific colleague. It can identify the tasks within a certain file, or a series of files, and create a custom task list for you. It can summarise the contents of a long document, total up the sales that you’ve made this week, or write an email summarising a Powerpoint that you’ve made.
Another great feature of Copilot for businesses is that it works with the permissions of the user; so it only searches through documents and data that you have access to. This keeps users GDPR compliant, and prevents them from accessing personal data or sensitive information that they should not be able to view. That being said, we’d encourage organisations to review their users’ permissions before encouraging them to give Copilot a try.
If you’re already using Microsoft 365, Copilot is an excellent time-saving tool. The integration of Microsoft’s applications with this AI really does take it to the next level, making those annoying and time consuming tasks immediately easier, and doing some serious heavy lifting when it comes to more complex pieces of work.
The limitations of AI
With both ChatGPT and Copilot, sometimes AIs get things wrong. Whether it's ChatGPT struggling with an equation, or Copilot missing a crucial piece of information, this technology does make mistakes. Generative AI’s are only as intelligent as the data that they are trained on, and when they don’t know the answer to a query, they often come up with something that sounds plausible, even if it’s completely fabricated.
That’s why, whether you use ChatGPT or Copilot, it’s always worth double checking its responses to make sure that they’re 100% fact.
