Before ChatGPT’s popularity skyrocketed, I was already testing the chatbot and other models. As a result, over the past couple of years, I’ve developed a sense of what makes a model great, including speed, reliability, accessibility, cost, features, and more. Since Copilot launched in February 2023, it has been at the top of my list – until now.
Copilot’s competitive advantage was to offer free features to users that ChatGPT reserved for ChatGPT Plus subscribers. These features also fixed all of ChatGPT’s biggest issues, including accessing the internet, knowing current events, and quotes. Therefore, Copilot brought the best value to users and earned its place as the best AI chatbot in my book.
Also: The best AI chatbots of 2024: ChatGPT, Copilot and interesting alternatives
However, in May, OpenAI held its Spring Update event, launching highly anticipated upgrades to ChatGPT, including Copilot’s great features, such as web browsing, multi-modal prompts, image generation, GPT intelligence -4, uploading documents, etc.
So why isn’t there equality? With the update, ChatGPT also gained features that Copilot does not have, including access to OpenAI’s latest flagship model, GPT-4o, and other cutting-edge upgrades. Below is an overview of the features that helped ChatGPT reclaim its crown (and how you can use them).
1. GPT-4o
I had to start with the crown jewel of updates: GPT-4o. Upgrading ChatGPT to GPT-4o from GPT-3.5 has granted the GPT-4 chatbot intelligence and a series of bonus features that allow it to perform at a higher level, including higher speeds and better understanding vision and audio.
Also: What does GPT mean? Understanding GPT-3.5, GPT-4, GPT-4o and more
The “o” stands for omni, referring to its ability to understand text, audio, image, and video input and produce text, audio, and images. This is a significant upgrade from GPT-3.5, which could only understand and display text.
With GPT-4o, free ChatGPT users also have access to features previously available on Copilot and ChatGPT Plus, including getting responses from the model and web, discussing images and documents, using the Memory, GPT Store access and analysis. data.
Also: OpenAI just offered ChatGPT users navigation, data analysis, and more for free.
Copilot still runs on GPT-4 Turbo, which is a very smart model despite lacking the many improvements the new model has as noted above.
2. Better understanding of images
Before this update, if you wanted to upload an image, you could not use the free version of ChatGPT but instead had to use Copilot or ChatGPT Plus. Now, users can not only upload images to the free version of ChatGPT, but the functionality has also been upgraded to provide users with better information.
Also: How to Subscribe to ChatGPT Plus (And 5 Reasons Why You Should)
OpenAI shared an example of how users could take advantage of enhanced vision by uploading an image of their menu for the chatbot to translate and offer detailed information, such as its history, meaning and recommendations. Another example of its advanced capabilities is that users can upload an image and ask the chatbot to extract the text and turn it into code.
3. GPT and GPT Store
Perhaps one of the most important advantages of ChatGPT over Copilot is that you can create GPTs for free on ChatGPT, while on Copilot you need to pay for a $20 per month Copilot Pro subscription. By creating your own GPT, you can customize a chatbot to meet your needs, saving you a lot of time in your workflow because you can avoid asking a chatbot every time to perform the same function.
Also: You can now create your own personalized Copilot GPT. here’s how
Another benefit is that free ChatGPT users can now access the GPT Store, where there are millions of custom chatbots created by other users and developers that you can choose from that can help you with specific tasks. The store includes GPTs from popular apps and sites including AllTrails, Khan Academy Code Tutor, Canva, and more.
4. Data analysis
Many people rely on chatbots to help them with tedious data analysis tasks. Fortunately, Copilot and ChatGPT can do this. The main difference is that Copilot’s data support is limited to Copilot Pro subscribers and works in Excel to generate formulas and analyze and summarize data.
Also: How to use ChatGPT to create charts and tables with Advanced Data Analysis
However, free ChatGPT now offers advanced data analysis tools, including creating interactive graphs and tables to visualize your data, interpreting CSV files or spreadsheets, summarizing data, and more. Since these operations don’t necessarily have to be done in Excel, users can get free help on their data management platform of choice.
5. More languages
As mentioned above, GPT-4o ChatGPT has some pretty incredible translation capabilities, made possible by its support for more languages. Since the update, ChatGPT supports over 50 languages. The chatbot will, by default, detect the browser language and update ChatGPT accordingly, or users can change it manually in settings.
Also: Forget Copilot: 5 major AI features that Google just rolled out to Chromebooks
Increased language support ensures that people around the world can access ChatGPT in the language of their choice. Copilot doesn’t have as wide availability with support for only 24 languages.
Bonus: new voice mode (coming soon)
If you followed the Spring Update event, you probably remember the new voice mode demo, which stole the show. Despite the previously existing voice mode in the chatbot, the new improved voice mode completely improves the experience using the video and audio capabilities of GPT-4o.
With the new voice mode, ChatGPT can use the context of your environment to provide voice responses, as shown in the demo below in which the chatbot comments on the user’s emotions simply by looking at their face.
Another benefit is that the new voice mode has been optimized to produce a more natural conversation, stopping when interrupted and having different intonation patterns, as shown in the video above. This experience will first roll out to ChatGPT Plus users in alpha, but will then become more widely available to free users. On the other hand, Copilot’s voice input essentially acts the same as your standard, unnatural voice assistant.