Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT: What’s the difference between the popular AI tools

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are two very popular AI tools that are in use today. While both tools may feel similar in terms of what they can do, there are some subtle and some big differences between ChatGPT and Copilot.  

Today, we look at what these differences are, so you can get a better idea of when to use ChatGPT and when to use Copilot for your AI needs. Before we begin looking at the differences, let’s briefly look at the similarities between the two tools. 

Copilot vs ChatGPT: What’s similar?

Both ChatGPT and Copilot are versatile text-generation platforms. Everything from generating small copies to long essays is possible on both platforms. You can also use both platforms to do more complex text generation like creating travel itineraries and generating code.  

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Other similar use cases involve most forms of writing, summarising longer pieces of text and even translation. Both ChatGPT and Copilot are great resources for these use cases, and you can use either.  

What can Copilot do that ChatGPT cannot?

Microsoft Copilot, especially if you use its Windows 11-integrated version, offers some neat tricks over ChatGPT. Being a system-wide integrated platform, allows Copilot to do things like change system-level settings, and even sport integration with Microsoft 365’s office suite programmes like Word and Excel. 

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System settings: Copilot, when used natively in Windows 11, allows you to do tasks like changing your system settings. These include changing from light mode to dark mode or finding particular settings pages using simply a prompt. So instead of digging through the Settings app, all you do is ask Copilot to change your system to dark mode (or vice versa).  

Image generation: Copilot can also turn text-based prompts into images, similar to tools like Midjourney. While ChatGPT can also create images on the paid, Pro version, Copilot lets you do this for free (with some daily limitations). So, you can use text prompts to get illustrations, realistic portraits of fictional characters or pretty much anything else in high resolution.  

Microsoft integration: Lastly, Copilot also benefits from being a Microsoft product, and features deeper integration with Microsoft 365 office suite programmes like Word, Excel or PowerPoint, offering AI-powered suggestions within these programmes without the need to leave the window. The use cases could include something as simple as synonym suggestions in Word or generating entire presentations in PowerPoint.  

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Those are some of the main differences between Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. To summarise, ChatGPT offers some special perks that leverage its system-level integration, that most other AI chatbots will simply not offer.

However, these will only work when you’re using a Windows 11 machine. For all other devices, including your smartphones, most of what ChatGPT and Copilot can do will be the same.