Microsoft reportedly favors Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 over GPT-5 in Visual Studio Code
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Aa OpenAI is looking beyond Microsoft for cloud services, Microsoft is quietly updating its AI strategy inside Visual Studio Code. As reported by TheVerge, a new feature called automatic model selection is rolling out to GitHub Copilot users, which focuses more on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 rather than OpenAI’s GPT-5.
The auto-selection system is designed to pick the “best model for optimal performance,” but internal communications confirm that paid Copilot users will “primarily rely on Claude Sonnet 4.” Free-tier users will see a rotation of models, including GPT-5, GPT-5 mini, and Claude.
Windering why Microsoft is choosing Anthropic’s one over OpenAI’s? Well, in June, Microsoft’s developer division told employees that Claude Sonnet 4 is the recommended model for GitHub Copilot, citing internal benchmarks.
Desoite the arrival of GPT-5, that guidance hasn’t changed. Thanks to The Information’s report from last week, we knew that Microsoft’s engineers have been instructed to default to Claude Sonnet 4 for coding work.
While it may sound like a strategy shifyt, it has more of Microsoft’s realization that Anthropic’s models are excelling at developer workflows like code generation, debugging, and inline suggestions.
That’s not all; early tests within the company reportedly showed stronger results from Claude in complex Excel and PowerPoint tasks as well, which is why some Microsoft 365 Copilot features will soon use Anthropic models too.
