Image courtesy of Microsoft
Microsoft added GPT-5, which also powers ChatGPT, to Copilot a day after adding OpenAI’s open-source GPT to its local services.
GPT-5 is now available in Copilot. It also powers ChatGPT. copilot.microsoft.comMicrosoft said Thursday. The Copilot application will probably run on Windows PCs in the future, but for now the Windows app seems to be using the older GPT-4 version, at least on my computer.
OpenAI released GPT-5 Thursday, promising improvements in general intelligence, as well as in creative writing, coding and health. OpenAI claimed it could code a website with just one prompt.
GPT-5 contains what OpenAI called “a router”which assigns queries to specific tasks depending on the complexity of the assignment. You’ll have to manually enable the drop-down menu on Microsoft’s Copilot website. According to the description, “Thinks quickly or deeply based on the task”it also seems that the router functionality is active.
A dumb but otherwise telling prompt, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood” quickly produced an answer: 700 pounds of wood. But when asked to “show your work,” Copilot delivered a lengthier explanation. It still wasn’t as detailed as the GPT-5 explanation available on ChatGPT, though the two AI engines arrived at the same answer.
Expect to see GPT-5 within Microsoft 365 Copilot as well as GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code, and Azure Foundry, Microsoft said. Microsoft said GPT-5 on Azure AI Foundry will be available today, but its presence on GitHub Copilot was couched in future terms.
On Wednesday, Microsoft said that it was bringing gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B to Azure AI Foundry, and GPU-optimized versions of the gpt-oss-20B model to Windows devices through Foundry Local. These open-source GPT-4 models require a discrete GPU with more than 16GB of VRAM.
I ran the gpt-oss model on the Framework Desktop, with its Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU and integrated GPU, which can be configured to assign 96GB of its available memory as VRAM for a significant performance boost. It actually produced better answers than a substantially more complex Meta Llama Scout 109B model that ran on the same hardware.
Meanwhile, Microsoft said it believes the GPT-5 model is safer than its predecessors. “The results show that the reasoning model exhibited one of the strongest AI safety profiles among prior OpenAI models against several modes of attack, including malware generation, fraud/scam automation and other harms,” it said.
Mark Hachman, Senior Editor at PCWorld
Mark is a technology writer with over 30 years experience. He has been writing for PCWorld since the last decade. He has written over 3,500 articles, covering PC microprocessors and peripherals, Microsoft Windows, and other topics, for PCWorld. Mark has written for PC Magazine, Byte and eWEEK as well as Popular Science, Electronic Buyers’ News and Electronic Buyers’ News. He also shared a Jesse H. Neal Award with Popular Science for breaking news. He recently gave away a collection consisting of several dozen Thunderbolt Docks and USB-C Hubs, because his office has no room.
