Microsoft integrates GPT-5 into Copilot with new smart mode

Theverge

Microsoft is significantly expanding the capabilities of its artificial intelligence offerings by integrating OpenAI’s newly unveiled GPT-5 model across its comprehensive suite of Copilot products. This major rollout encompasses the standard Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, and GitHub Copilot, marking a pivotal enhancement in AI assistance.

A cornerstone of this integration for the consumer-oriented Copilot is the introduction of a new “smart mode.” This intelligent functionality empowers the AI assistant to dynamically switch between different underlying models, allowing it to apply more profound reasoning for complex queries or deliver rapid responses for straightforward tasks. Notably, mirroring OpenAI’s strategy with ChatGPT, Microsoft is extending free access to GPT-5 capabilities within Copilot, democratizing access to advanced AI.

For business users, the impact on Microsoft 365 Copilot is substantial. With GPT-5, the enterprise AI assistant is engineered to excel in navigating intricate questions, maintaining coherence through extended conversations, and developing a more nuanced understanding of user context. This upgrade aims to significantly boost productivity and the quality of interactions within the Microsoft 365 environment. Furthermore, Copilot Studio, a platform designed for building custom AI assistants, will also gain access to GPT-5, providing developers with enhanced tools for creating sophisticated AI solutions.

Developers stand to benefit considerably from this widespread deployment as well. GitHub Copilot, the AI pair programmer, is now incorporating GPT-5 into all its paid plans. This upgrade is anticipated to deliver marked improvements in code generation and overall code quality, assisting developers in writing more efficient and accurate software. OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5, is available in four distinct versions, each optimized for specific functions. The foundational GPT-5 model is designed for advanced logic and multi-step problem-solving, while GPT-5-chat is specifically tuned for enterprise applications, capable of handling multimodal inputs—such as text and images—and maintaining context-aware conversations throughout.

Additionally, Microsoft is making GPT-5 accessible through Azure AI Foundry, providing developers with the necessary tools to embed this powerful model into their custom AI-powered applications. Azure AI Foundry includes a sophisticated model router, a system engineered to automatically select and apply the most appropriate AI model for a given task or query, thereby streamlining the development process and ensuring optimal performance. This extensive integration across Microsoft’s AI offerings underscores a strategic commitment to infuse its entire ecosystem with the very latest advancements in large language models.