So Bing Chat is now 'Copilot'? It's confusing, but here are the 3 new changes.

Bing Chat is now Copilot, according to an announcement during Microsoft Ignite 2023.

But is it more than just a name change?

Yes and no. You're not alone in being confused by what's going on with Bing Chat — er, we mean "Copilot." But don't worry, we've figured it out for you.

What's new with Bing Chat (now Copilot)?

There aren't any major changes with the Bing Chat-turned-Copilot chatbot. "Refinement" is a better word to describe Microsoft's head-scratching actions. Let's take a look at three tweaks Microsoft implemented for its AI chatbot.

1. A new home

Copilot, formerly Bing Chat, now has its own standalone webpage. You can access it here: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

This means you no longer need to visit Bing before you can access Microsoft's AI chat experience. You can simply visit the webpage above — without Bing Search and other services cluttering your interactions with Copilot. In other words, it's a lot more "ChatGPT-like" now.

Interestingly, however, the link only appears to work on the desktop versions of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. When we tried to access it on Safari, or any mobile browser (including Chrome), we got the following roadblock:

Not all platforms have access to the new URL. Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Bing Chat

2. A minor makeover

Microsoft made some visual changes to the rebranded AI chatbot, but they're arguably insignifcant.

Here's what the old Bing Chat looked like:

Bing Chat Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

And here's the rebranded version:

Bing Chat is now Copilot. Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Left: Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Right: Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

While the tiles are smaller on the new variant, they feature the same prompts: Code, Organize, Compare, Write, Create, Laugh and Travel.

You're also still asked to choose the conversation style you prefer: Creative, Balanced or Precise. The only big change, of course, is the new name (i.e., Copilot) as well as the tagline: "Your everyday AI companion." Overall, the UI is similar, although the theme color changed from a light blue to an off-white.

Bing Chat, now Copilot, is still a free experience, giving users access to DALLE-3 and GPT-4. However, if you want to experience Copilot on platforms such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, other popular productivity apps, you'll need to cough up a subscription fee for what Microsoft calls "Copilot for Microsoft 365."

3. Better security for enterprise users

Copilot is introducing free commercial data protection for customers who have Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium accounts. That means "prompts and responses are not saved," the announcement said. "Microsoft has no eyes-on access to it, and it’s not used to train the underlying models."

So users who previously had a Bing Chat Enterprise account, or pay for a Microsoft 365 license, get the added benefit of more data protection.

This will officially roll out on Dec. 1.

What's stayed the same?

For non-paying users, Microsoft intends to include commercial data protection over time. But as it stands for free users, Copilot has the same data policy as the former Bing Chat and saves information from your conversations. So if you were a casual, non-subscribing Bing Chat user, the only difference is the name and domain change. You still get access to OpenAI's GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 models, but you must be mindful about what information you share with the chatbot.

To put it succinctly, for free users, there's not much to write home about: Bing Chat is now called Copilot and it has a new home. Whoop-dee-doo.