Everyone knows about Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s tight partnership. As such, the former is able to gain access to some of the latter’s most powerful AI smarts. For example, Copilot (then called Bing AI) gained early access to GPT-4. Now, Microsoft allows Copilot users to access OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model for free.
This is a pretty new model, only hitting the market last month. o1 is a reasoning model, which is different from a typical AI model. A reasoning model will actually take extra time to come up with its answer. Also, it will list all of the steps it took to come to its conclusion. It’s the equivalent of a person showing their work while solving a math problem.
There are other reasoning models on the market like Google’s Gemini 2.0 Thinking and controversial DeepSeek’s R1. They’re for people who want more thought-out answers and to be able to see the model’s thought process.
Microsoft makes o1 available to Copilot users
When Bing AI started using GPT-4 back in the day, we were a bit surprised. Microsoft was giving people free access to a model that was locked behind a paywall. Well, it looks like the company is doing it again.
According to a new report, Microsoft is giving its Copilot users access to o1, and you don’t need a subscription to either ChatGPT Plus or Copilot+ to use it. When you’re using Copilot, free users will see the Think Deeper button. This feature has been around since October, but it was in its experimental stage. Only paying users could use the feature back then.
When you click the Think Deeper button, you’ll see Copilot take about 30 seconds to come up with your answer. Rather than generating the answer right away, it will take more time to consider it. This, ostensibly, leads to more accurate answers. So, if you don’t mind waiting for more informed responses, then you should consider trying it out. Just know that, even though it’s a reasoning model, you shouldn’t expect answers to be 100% accurate.
