ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot – which is right for you?

Ray Poynter, 6 October, 2024

I am often asked whether it is best to use ChatGPT or Copilot, so here are some general observations.

Security
When integrated with the rest of the Microsoft range, for example, Copilot in Office 365 or Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot is a very secure environment. Copilot is as safe as using Teams or Outlook. You know that when using Copilot, none of your materials are used to train the underlying AI. This makes it very attractive to many large organisations. Consequently, some people have no choice: Copilot is allowed, and ChatGPT is not permitted.

ChatGPT, in its Teams and Enterprise versions, is pretty secure and does not use your materials to train the AI, but it does not have the standing of Microsoft’s systems and compliance.

Power
In terms of being the strongest AI, ChatGPT tends to be ahead. Copilot is essentially based on GPT4, and ChatGPT 4o is more powerful, and 4o-mini is faster. This will keep changing. A few months ago, we all thought GPT4 was great because we had compared it with 3.5, and now we are trying the o1 series. Things keep moving on, but ChatGPT seems to always be ahead of Copilot.

Integration with Office and Automation
This is an area where Copilot is the obvious choice. With Copilot in Office 365, every aspect of Office has a Copilot icon, for example, in Teams, Word, Excel, etc. I can use Copilot to make suggestions, check my work and automate tasks. My Copilot can access my files in a way that ChatGPT can’t. For example, I can ask Copilot to summarise the emails I received this week; it reads the emails from my inbox and uses the AI to create a summary. ChatGPT can’t access my inbox, and I am not sure I would want it to yet.

Advanced Analytics
One area where ChatGPT is way ahead at the moment is using Python for its Advanced Data Analysis. This enables me to ask ChatGPT to upload an Excel file and call routines such as Factor Analysis or Sentiment Analysis. Copilot can help me leverage Excel, including writing scripts, but this power is limited to what my Excel can do. I have played with extending Excel by using Azure, but that takes using Copilot out of the straightforward category. (I have not had a chance to try the recently announced Python integration with Excel, but I am looking forward to trying it.)

As a Search Engine
I have used ChatGPT as my primary search engine for over a year. However, I have recently switched to using Copilot (or Bing Chat, as it used to be called) as I find it better. It seems to search some places ChatGPT doesn’t (even though it also uses Bing), and Copilot seems to go to search more readily. ChatGPT seems to prefer adding information from its own knowledge.

APIs and Programming
If you want to create your own programs and call the AI via APIs, ChatGPT is your only option (out of these two) at the moment; I am not aware of anything similar from Copilot.

Cost
The cost will depend on what you already have and how many users you want. For me, a two-person Teams subscription is similar to what I pay for Copilot 365. I consider them both affordable, and I have both.

Which do I use?
I use both. I use ChatGPT when I need the API and for power processing market research data, especially quant. I use Copilot when using Excel, Teams, Word etc, and I use it for search.

Want to learn more about Copilot for insights and research?
I am running an online course on using Copilot in Microsoft 365 for Insights and Research on 23 October. In the course I will cover how to use Copilot in designing research, managing projects, analysing data, and creating reports.

You can find out more at https://buytickets.at/researchwiseailtd/1381516

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