Chapter 2: Microsoft Copilot

What is Microsoft Copilot?

While ChatGPT gets lots of hype, Microsoft has quietly built an impressive free alternative AI chatbot called Copilot.

Copilot matches ChatGPT's conversational abilities using the same underlying AI models — and it has some unique advantages:

• Multi-Modal Understanding: Copilot combines text, images, and web data to provide more contextual responses.

• Coding and Math Strengths: Copilot excels at coding, data analysis, calculations and visualizations.

• Creative Features: Copilot can generate original music and images using the latest AI models.

• Video Capabilities: Copilot can summarize and answer questions about YouTube videos.

How is this possible? Well, Microsoft owns part of OpenAI (49%, to be exact). With partial ownership, Microsoft has access to the same AI models and allows users to use the models for free in Copilot.

For reference, OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and the current leader among the many companies trying to build the most powerful AI models. As it stands, OpenAI is about 6 months ahead in training its models compared to the nearest competitors — which, in the world of AI, is a huge lead.

The closest competitors to OpenAI are Google’s Gemini models available in Bard, Anthropic’s Claude 2, and open-source AI such as Meta Llama 2 and Mistral AI.

The bottom line is Copilot provides a free way to use state-of-the-art AI from your web browser or mobile device. Keep reading to learn how!

How to access GPT-4 Turbo and DALL-E 3 For Free

Microsoft Copilot can be accessed 4 different ways (all for free):

1. On any browser on the web

2. Using Microsoft Edge browser

3. Using the Android App

4. Using the Apple iOS App

This cross-device access makes it easy to take advantage of Copilot's AI abilities on the go.

Not only will you be able to access OpenAI’s latest AI models integrated into ChatGPT Premium for free using Copilot, but you’ll also be able to access some additional AI features with Copilot not seen anywhere else.

Since you’ve already mastered the foundations of ChatGPT (from our previous chapter), we can get to the more unique features immediately!

Create your own song using Copilot AI

One unique thing Copilot can do is generate original music! This is thanks to integration with an AI music creator called Suno.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide to helping you get started.

Step 1: Enable Suno in Copilot

• Navigate to the plugins tab, make sure 'Search' is enabled, then activate Suno

  

Step 2: Start prompting

• Describe the type of song you want created.

Don't overthink it, simple prompts work very well. Here's the example prompt we used for my music track:

“Make a groovy rap jazz song about AI advancing society”

Step 3: Get your song

After about a minute, Copilot will give you an external link to listen to the song

Here’s the link to our groovy rap-jazz song if you want some new tunes created by yours truly.

It may take some trial and error, but Copilot can produce surprisingly good AI-generated music from just prompts.

Here are some fun ideas to try:

• Ask for a hip-hop song about your hometown

• Put in lyrics from your favorite tunes as inspiration

• Create a Heavy Metal song. Compared to other music generators from Google and Meta, Copilot does this VERY well.

The key is prompting creativity! Copilot's music abilities are a free perk you won't find in any other writing assistant.

If you create any catchy tunes, we encourage you to share them on Twitter and tag us @TheRundownAI so we can repost them!

Use DALL-E 3 to create AI images.

Copilot also provides free access to DALL-E 3, one of the most advanced AI image generators.

You can describe almost anything, and Copilot will generate a corresponding unique image.

Let's walk through an example of using DALL-E 3 in Copilot to create a logo:

Step 1: Upload & Analyze Logos

The first step is to upload a logo that you wish to emulate. Rather than starting from scratch, we’ll have ChatGPT analyze your favorite logo’s style.

For our example, we will use The Rundown’s official logo, but you can upload anything, such as the Nike logo, the OpenAI logo, Walmart, or whatever your heart desires.

After you upload the logo, enter this prompt:

“I want to generate a logo similar to this one. Describe a prompt I would use in DALL-E 3 to achieve this.“

GPT-4 Vision’s advanced Multimodal capabilities within Copilot will allow it to see the logo you provided and create a prompt.

Step 2: Use Prompt and Generate Logo

Copy the text that Copilot has now provided, then paste it back into the text box.

Here’s the unique part: Add extra details such as extra spacing, your business name, or any other relevant information.

For us, we simply added: “but make it more retro“ at the end of the prompt.

Step 3: Make Necessary Changes

The best part of this process is the ability to converse with Copilot to reiterate your logo.

Need the spacing a little bit wider? No problem. Just prompt Copilot and let DALL-E 3 do its magic.

For example:

"Make the text slightly larger and increase the space between the words."

Copilot will regenerate the logo with your requested tweaks!

The key is iteratively prompting Copilot to refine the image until you're happy with the end result.

Copilot Limitations

While Copilot matches most of ChatGPT's capabilities using the most advanced AI models for free, ChatGPT may occasionally provide slightly better responses in some limited cases.

This is because ChatGPT has been specifically optimized by OpenAI on the backend for conversational excellence. Copilot uses the same models but is more generalized.

So, if you want the absolute best outputs from the latest AI models and are willing to spend, try ChatGPT Premium (priced at $20/month).

However, we always recommend trying out Copilot first to access the state-of-the-art AI features for free before considering the upgrade.

Chapter 2 Recap:

In this chapter, you learned:

• What Microsoft Copilot is and how it works

• How to generate custom music and images using Copilot's creative features

• Copilot's strengths and minor limitations compared to ChatGPT

The key takeaway is that Copilot provides free access to advanced AI models like DALL-E 3 and GPT-4 models.

Next, we will explore using AI to supercharge your notetaking productivity with Google's NotebookLM app. See you there!