Can Copilot do a better job adding the right collective noun for an animal or group? The answer is a good example of why NOT to trust AI fully. Plus, another AI trick and the better answer from ChatGPT.
Microsoft Word grammar has a problem with collective nouns, see our article Collective Noun check in Word isn’t great.
We wondered if Copilot could do a better job, turns out it can … almost.
We started with a selection of sentences that Word 365 does not mark as errors for using the wrong collective noun. Add the prompt “Replace with the correct collective noun”.
Wait a few moments to see a response like this:
They are all correct except for “cuddle of koalas”. Strictly speaking there is no koala collective noun because they are solitary animals but the usually expected term is ‘colony’. We had a quick look through the top web searches and can’t figure out where Copilot got ‘cuddle’ from. It’s cute but not correct.
It’s a trivial example of an important point. AI has it’s uses but not for facts. Any hard data from AI needs to be double-checked.
Reformatting with Copilot
One thing Copilot can do is reformat text in a different way. The original result, above, was a bulleted list. In the ‘What do you want Copilot to change’ or ‘For example’ box ask for a change in the last result. We typed “Not a list” to convert the bullet list into a single paragraph like this:
ChatGPT is better
ChatGPT from OpenAI is the technological basis for Microsoft’s AI including Copilot. Both usually give similar answers but ChatGPT’s are often better, more accurate and complete.
We tried the same collective noun test in ChatGPT and it gave slightly different answers.
A ‘band of musicians’ instead of ‘ensemble’. Either could be correct, depending on the type of music played.
A ‘colony of koalas’ and even adding a note about the koala term.
