If you use Bing and ChatGPT regularly, prepare for things to look a little different as Microsoft is moving forward with plans to rebrand it as Copilot.

This is significant because it suggests that Microsoft has found a broad branding strategy for its ChatGPT-powered services. However, this should not come as a surprise.

Microsoft has always talked extensively about this technology as Microsoft Copilot, with Windows Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot already in the works, and Windows 11 and Microsoft apps, with ChatGPT incorporating LLM-trained chatbots similar to Bing. Currently, the Copilot brand appears to be so successful that Microsoft is applying it retroactively to Bing.

Bing with ChatGPT was the term used to announce the chatbot-supported search tool at the first Microsoft ChatGPT event in February 2023, but to simplify things, a Microsoft blog post published today confirms that it is now Copilot. As someone who attended that February event in person and heard CEO Satya Nadella say "Bing with ChatGPT" to a room full of confused journalists, I can assure you that it always sounds a bit awkward.

"We are taking the next steps to simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone," an excerpt from a Microsoft blog post published today (November 15) as the kickoff to Microsoft's Ignite conference It reads.

"Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will henceforth simply be Copilot.

So if you are a regular Bing user with ChatGPT, don't expect too much change with the branding transition; you can still access Copilot to chat, access the Internet to answer questions, perform searches, etc. You can. [Microsoft seems to be positioning this as a sort of "free" tier of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The business-grade version costs $30 per user per month and offers additional features such as better data protection, access to Microsoft 365 apps, and the new Copilot Studio, a low-code tool for creating your own Copilot chatbot.

With ChatGPT now officially a Copilot extension, Bing will not bring any serious changes to the way we use Copilot. Because the tool we use will, in Microsoft's future vision, be "smart" enough to do its own work.

Because if you dig into the blog post linked above, you'll find additional details about other implementations of Copilot, such as Copilot sitting in on Teams meetings as an assistant, taking notes and quotes, and ghostwriting Outlook They talk about tricks like taking notes, quotes, and ghostwriting Outlook emails to make them look like you wrote them.

Thus, while this name change is not a major issue, the move to Copilot foreshadows a broader shift in the way we talk and think about our work. For example, it may seem silly to tell Copilot to check directions to the doctor's office, but Microsoft hopes that it will soon feel natural for Copilot to take notes, draft e-mails, suggest code snippets, and perform profitability calculations They hope it will soon feel natural.

However, it is still early days for this technology, and it remains to be seen how good or useful it will be.