OpenAI’s much-anticipated GPT-5 model officially launched Thursday, and Microsoft is rolling it out across nearly all of its major platforms in a sweeping upgrade that underscores the deepening AI collaboration between the two tech giants.

From Copilot in Windows to Microsoft 365, GitHub, and Azure AI Foundry, GPT-5 is now embedded across Microsoft’s ecosystem, making the latest generation of OpenAI’s large language model accessible to both free and paid users, depending on the product.

GPT-5 Comes to Microsoft Copilot — and It’s Free

One of the most immediate upgrades is in Microsoft Copilot, where GPT-5 is now the backbone of a new “smart mode”. This feature allows the AI assistant to intelligently switch between models depending on the task — for instance, choosing a more advanced model like GPT-5 for tasks that require deeper reasoning or problem-solving, and a lighter one for quicker responses.

Free users of Copilot will now get access to GPT-5 by default, mirroring OpenAI’s decision to offer GPT-5 access to free ChatGPT users. This means millions of Windows users interacting with Copilot in apps like Notepad, Paint, and File Explorer will now have the power of GPT-5 at their fingertips.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Gets Smarter

Enterprise users aren’t left out. Microsoft 365 Copilot, which integrates AI into apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, is also getting GPT-5 today. Microsoft says the upgrade brings improved reasoning, better context retention, and more accurate responses during long conversations.

“With GPT-5, Microsoft 365 Copilot is better at reasoning through complex questions, staying on track in longer conversations and understanding the user’s context,” Microsoft said in a blog post.

Copilot Studio, Microsoft’s platform for customizing AI workflows and building plugins, also now runs GPT-5.

GitHub Copilot Upgrades to GPT-5

Developers are also getting a major boost. GitHub Copilot, Microsoft’s AI coding assistant, is rolling out GPT-5 to all paid plans starting today. The model delivers notable improvements in code generation, refactoring, and multi-step logic tasks, which GitHub says should result in fewer hallucinations and more production-grade output.

OpenAI confirmed that GPT-5 comes in four variants, with enhancements in both reasoning and code quality. One of those variants, GPT-5-chat, is optimized specifically for enterprise applications, including multimodal and context-aware conversations — a perfect fit for integrated dev environments and productivity tools.

Azure AI Foundry Opens GPT-5 to Developers

Rounding out the release, Microsoft is also making GPT-5 available on Azure AI Foundry — its developer platform for building and scaling AI-powered apps.

Using the new model router feature, developers can now automatically direct tasks to the best-fitting GPT-5 variant, ensuring efficiency for workloads that vary in complexity and modality. This integration gives startups and enterprises alike access to the most advanced AI available, without needing to build infrastructure from scratch.

A Unified AI Front

Today’s rollout of GPT-5 marks a milestone in Microsoft’s multi-year AI strategy. By embedding OpenAI’s most powerful model across its platforms, from personal productivity to enterprise development, Microsoft is building what it calls a “unified AI fabric”. That strategy puts the company in a strong position to maintain its lead in AI infrastructure, while pushing broader adoption of generative tools in both consumer and commercial markets.

With GPT-5 now live in both Microsoft and OpenAI products, a new phase of AI-powered computing has officially begun.