Everybody’s Talking: Should You Be Listening to ChatGPT, Copilot, Microsoft 365 Chat, or Bing Enterprise Chat?

Everybody’s talking about generative AI, specifically the smart chat applications powered by this technology, including OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 Chat, and Bing Enterprise Chat. Understandably, there can be some confusion about which app does what and why or when you’d choose one over another. To help clear the air, we asked our resident Velosio AI experts to outline each application’s strengths, use cases, and pricing to help you choose the right tool for the right task.

ChatGPT Is The Know-It-All In the Room

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been trained on a vast amount of information and can answer a wide range of topics, from historical events to scientific concepts. If you need quick information or an explanation on a diverse array of subjects, ChatGPT is an excellent choice.

Here are some reasons why you might choose ChatGPT over the other options:

• Creativity: ChatGPT can assist with generating creative content, such as story or blog ideas, brainstorming, and more. If someone is looking for inspiration or diverse perspectives on a topic, you’ll find it here.
• Programming Help: ChatGPT can assist users with coding questions, debug code snippets, and provide insights into many programming-related topics. (It can also come up with some mildly funny jokes, like this: “Why do programmers prefer dark mode? Because the light attracts bugs.”)
• Learning and Education: ChatGPT can be a tool for learning and education, where users can ask questions about various subjects and receive detailed explanations. For example, you could ask it to teach you how to bake bread or provide a detailed description of our solar system.

When To Use: Best for general-purpose tasks outside of the business environment. ChatGPT can handle a variety of linguistic styles, from formal to casual, and even poetic or playful.
Example Use Case: A colleague of ours just had great results asking ChatGPT to draft their wedding vows!

Price: Free or $20/month for premium subscription.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Brings Everyone into The Conversation

Microsoft Copilot is not specifically a chat app. Instead, it’s a comprehensive suite of AI-powered productivity solutions making waves as it lands throughout Microsoft’s product line, including Windows, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and more. Read more in our ongoing Copilot blog series.

Here, we’re talking specifically about Microsoft 365 Copilot, which combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft 365 apps to usher in a whole new way of working, using just your own words. Microsoft refers to 365 Chat as the “hero experience in Microsoft 365 Copilot.” Another way to look at it is as the vehicle that delivers the smart chat function (Microsoft 365 Chat) throughout the Microsoft 365 suite. Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available for enterprise customers on November 1st.

Here’s how Microsoft 365 Copilot fits in the mix:

Microsoft 365 Chat Keeps Up with The Office Buzz

Microsoft 365 Chat is an enhanced feature included with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Initially previewed as Business Chat, this feature evolved significantly over recent months, offering much more than just basic Q&A functionality. Microsoft 365 Chat has its own strengths, especially in the domain of professional communication, collaboration, and integration with Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools.

Here are some reasons why you might prefer Microsoft 365 Chat:

• Built Around Business Collaboration: While ChatGPT is a one-to-one tool, Microsoft 365 Chat is optimized for professional collaboration within the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Integration with Microsoft Products: 365 Chat is deeply integrated with other Microsoft 365 services like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, Teams, and more.
• Deep Contextual Awareness: It combs across your entire universe of data—all your emails, meetings, chats, documents, and more, plus the web—to solve your most complex problems at work. This gives it deep contextual awareness and the ability to do things like summarize a Teams meeting or all your unread emails.

When To Use: Perfect for complex tasks requiring a deep understanding of your entire work ecosystem.

Example Use Case: You’re a CMO. Use Microsoft 365 Chat to analyze market trends, summarize team feedback, recommend marketing strategies, and create a PowerPoint presentation based on this information to present at a meeting in an hour.

Price: Included with Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30/month per user.

Bing Chat for Enterprise Keeps the Conversation In-House

You’ve heard the commotion about potentially proprietary information used to train the big AI large language models, but that won’t happen with Bing Chat Enterprise. What goes in—and comes out—remains protected. User and business data are protected and will not leak (by Bing Chat anyway!) outside the organization. Chat data is not saved, and not even Microsoft has access. Whether researching industry insights, analyzing corporate data, or looking for informed inspiration, Bing Chat Enterprise is the place to start.

Here are some reasons you might choose Bing Chat Enterprise over the others:

• Commercial Data Protection: Your user and business data is encrypted in transit and will not leak outside the enterprise. As such, your data is not used to train the large data models.
• Business Focused: Essentially, Bing Chat for Enterprise can perform the same tasks that ChatGPT and Microsoft 365 Chat can, including content creation and brainstorming ideas, but it does it behind a big, secure iron curtain.
• Verifiable Answers: Bing Chat Enterprise is grounded in web data and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations and visual answers such as graphs and images.

When to Use: Think of Bing Chat Enterprise as the enterprise version of Bing Chat. The big differences are commercial-grade data protection and the injection of proprietary enterprise data.

Example Use Case: Use Bing Chat for Enterprise to summarize internal documents or create a SWOT analysis for your marketing team.
Price: Included with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium — or as a standalone option for $5/month per user (standalone)

Everybody’s Talking

As AI-powered chat applications proliferate — both in terms of quantity and user adoption rates — it’s helpful to have a clear understanding of which tool to use to best accomplish your goals. We hope this conversation has helped clear the air — and given you something to chat about.

If you have questions about incorporating Microsoft’s AI tools, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Chat, and Bing Enterprise Chat, an excellent place to start is with our free organizational readiness assessment. Of course, you can also reach out directly to our consulting team.