A day after adding open-source GPT models to its local AI stack, Microsoft has gone all-in on GPT-5 for Copilot — the same model now powering ChatGPT. As of Thursday, if you head over to copilot.microsoft.com and flip the drop-down toggle, you can try it out yourself.
GPT-5 is the biggest leap yet from OpenAI. It’s not just faster or “smarter” in the vague sense — it comes with a built-in “router” system that decides how to answer you based on how tricky the request is. Simple ask? It answers in seconds. Complex coding or reasoning challenge? It slows down, thinks more deeply, and pulls in specialized skills.
Right now, that’s live on the web version of Copilot, but oddly enough, the Windows Copilot app still appears to be running GPT-4 — at least for now. Microsoft says GPT-5 will eventually land there, and it’s also slated for Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code, and Azure AI Foundry. Azure customers can use it immediately, but GitHub Copilot users will have to wait a bit longer.
In tests, GPT-5 is noticeably flexible. A joke question like “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” gave the same number (700 pounds) both in Copilot and ChatGPT, but ChatGPT went into more detail explaining how it got there. The difference? Likely just tuning — Copilot’s responses tend to be more concise unless you explicitly ask for the long version.
This move comes right after Microsoft added gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B to Azure AI Foundry, plus a GPU-optimized 20B version for Windows through Foundry Local. Those local models need at least 16GB of VRAM, but high-end integrated GPUs — like the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 that can be set to use 96GB of system memory as VRAM — can run them surprisingly well, in some cases beating out more massive models like Meta’s Llama Scout 109B.
One big talking point from Microsoft: GPT-5 is supposedly the safest model they’ve ever shipped, with strong defenses against abuse like malware creation and scam automation. That’s important, because the new features — from single-prompt website creation to advanced coding help — raise the stakes on responsible AI deployment.
Bottom line: GPT-5 is here, it’s faster and more versatile, and Microsoft’s making sure you can use it in Copilot before the hype dust even settles.