Two weeks ago at its Ignite event, Microsoft made something of a snoozy announcement: the company was rebranding its generative AI-based Bing Chat and calling it Copilot instead.
Ho-hum. Another day, another change in the company’s branding strategy. Par for the course, right?.
But the announcement was more consequential than you might think. It signaled Microsoft has thrown in the towel on the internet search war with Google and is turning its full attention to AI.
Copilots everywhere
To understand why, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s innocuous-sounding announcement. The company is renaming Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise, both of which will now be called Copilot. From a branding perspective, it makes perfect sense because it unifies all of the company’s genAI efforts under one brand. Microsoft already has several AI tools under the Copilot moniker, including Copilot in Windows, Copilot for Microsoft 365 (currently only available for enterprise customers), and Microsoft Security Copilot, with others to be released.
