You can’t even blink without Microsoft rolling out yet another way to interact with its new AI tools. The Bing search engine is now built around conversational AI, Windows has an AI Copilot, and now even your Android phone can get in on the fun. Microsoft has quietly released an official Copilot app in the Google Play Store. It has access to the latest OpenAI models, and it’s completely free.
This app is not the first to bring modern AI chat to your phone. OpenAI has a ChatGPT app, and Microsoft already offers similar features in the updated Bing app. However, the new app includes image generator features that aren’t in OpenAI’s chat app, and the Bing app has a lot of clutter like news, widgets, and browser sync. The Copilot app is just the latest OpenAI models, ready to respond to your queries.
You can type, speak, or upload images to interact with the AI in the new Copilot app. The basic chat works without logging in, but we found some features were not enabled for guests. Logging in offers the option to toggle on the GPT-4 model, which is OpenAI’s latest. The app notes that replies may be slower with GPT-4, but the results should be better. All of the AI replies have buttons so you can rate the quality of the reply, and the copy button dumps the whole thing into your clipboard for use in other apps.
In addition to asking for text replies and content, the Copilot app has Dall-E 3, OpenAI’s latest image generator model. Like Windows Copilot, asking for images in the Android app delivers four 1024×1024 images that you can download right from the app. In general, we’ve found Dall-E 3 to be much more capable than the last version. It still doesn’t always understand what you want, but the images are more internally consistent, with fewer obvious AI screw-ups.
Unfortunately, Copilot cannot interact with the Android OS like it does Windows. The Windows Copilot can control features and apps on your computer, but the Android app is just for generating text and images. Adding support for some of Android’s system APIs could make Copilot more useful and differentiate this app from Microsoft’s other chatbots.
Microsoft has spent the past 20 years playing catchup with the rest of big tech—from web search to mobile, Microsoft has been bringing up the rear. But for once, it’s in the lead as everyone is suddenly obsessed with generative AI. So, it’s not really surprising to see it milking its advantage for all its worth. You can indulge Microsoft’s AI aspirations by downloading the app from the Play Store.
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