OpenAI Reasoning Model Is Now Free for Co-Pilot
Following the surge in popularity of Chinese AI app Deepseek and its free reasoning model this week, frequent OpenAI partner Microsoft is helping the US AI leader ditch the paywall for its own reasoning model by giving all Copilot users free access to OpenAI o1 .
Note the distinct absence of “Plus” or “Pro” after “Co-Pilot”. You don’t need specialized hardware or a ChatGPT or Copilot subscription to do this. The news comes in a LinkedIn post from Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman, in which the executive said Copilot’s “Think Deeper” feature is now “free and available to all Copilot users.”
Think Deeper began testing in October and essentially gives the chatbot more time (about 30 seconds) to consider your query before responding. It doesn’t have access to the Internet , so it can’t search for information in real time, but in turn can walk you through the steps needed to get the answer, and will supposedly self-correct.
The goal here is to make AI better at handling complex STEM topics and clues. For example, OpenAI claims that o1 can solve 83% of the International Mathematics Olympiad problems, while the no-reasoning model GPT-4o can only solve 13%.
To use Think Deeper in Copilot, simply click or tap the “Think Deeper” button when entering a hint. If you don’t see it, it might take a while to get to you – I’m in the same boat.
Suleiman didn’t specify any restrictions on access to the new o1 model, although I’m guessing they’re the same as other restrictions on the free version of Copilot, meaning you might not have access during peak hours. But it’s still a better deal than ChatGPT’s own site , where o1 limited access costs $20 per month and unlimited access costs $200 per month.
The sudden move to the free o1 option can’t help but feel like a response to Deepseek’s R1, which the company claims matches the o1 in several ways. But whatever decisions are being made behind the scenes at OpenAI and Microsoft, the timing couldn’t be better for users—Deepseek is already facing serious privacy issues , including chat logs that have been left open for public viewing.
However, Microsoft is still pushing as many features as they can here. Although Microsoft Services has not yet made Deepseek R1 available to consumers, it is already integrated into Microsoft’s AI developer tools.