At this year’s Microsoft Ignite 2023 event, Microsoft announced significant rebranding efforts for its AI chatbot previously launched on Bing.
The chatbot, initially known as Bing Chat, has been renamed to Copilot in Bing. Additionally, the enterprise version, formerly Bing Chat Enterprise, is now simply called Copilot.
The rationale behind these name changes, according to Microsoft, is not to create confusion, despite the company having several products under the Copilot brand.
Caitlin Roulston, Microsoft’s director of communications, explained to TechCrunch that this rebranding aligns with Microsoft’s aim to offer a cohesive Copilot experience for both consumer and commercial users.
The rebranding might also be a strategic move to dissociate the technology from Bing, especially considering a StatCounter report in August which suggested that Bing had not gained significant market share from Google since the launch of Bing Chat. Microsoft has contested these findings.
Along with the new branding, starting December 1, users logging into Bing with a Microsoft Entra ID for corporate accounts will enjoy “commercial data protection” with Copilot in Bing. This means their data will neither be stored nor used for training AI models, ensuring Microsoft does not access it.
Roulston noted that Copilot’s commercial terms will be updated on December 1 to reflect its status as a generally available Microsoft product, incorporating Microsoft’s universal license terms for online services.
“Copilot will update the commercial terms and conditions on December 1 to reflect that it’s a generally available product from Microsoft,” she added.
“As part of this, it will inherit Microsoft’s universal license terms for online services … Over time, Microsoft will expand eligibility of Copilot with commercial data protection to even more Entra ID users at no additional cost.”
