Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat – Copilot for all your employees

Kirk Koenigsbauer is the COO of the Experiences + Devices division at Microsoft 

AI adoption is already happening in the workplace, but employees aren’t waiting for an official rollout. Our most recent Work Trend Index shows that 75% of employees are using AI at work, and 78% of them are bringing their own AI tools – largely consumer grade tools. This surge in AI adoption reflects clear demand for productivity gains, but unmanaged and often unsecured tools create real security and compliance risks. No organization wants confidential information inadvertently exposed or used to train external AI models. 

Leaders recognize the need for a secure, enterprise-wide AI solution that meets employee demand while ensuring data protection. However, some customers we meet with want to study ROI benefits before committing to a full AI subscription for every employee. 

That’s why we introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat in January 2025. Copilot Chat provides free, secure AI chat powered by GPT-4o, giving organizations an immediate and compliant alternative to consumer AI tools. Employees get powerful AI access while IT retains control—without requiring additional subscription commitments. With enterprise-grade security, built-in compliance, and flexible pay-as-you-go AI agents, Copilot Chat allows organizations to experiment, scale, and validate AI’s impact. 

By offering employees a secure, discoverable, and powerful AI experience, organizations can embrace AI on their own terms—ensuring productivity gains without sacrificing security or overcommitting budgets. 

Copilot Chat is a free* AI service for your whole organization 

Copilot Chat helps employees in every role work smarter and accomplish more. When they need to do Internet-based research to get their job done, they should use Copilot Chat to get up-to-date summarized insights with speed and accuracy, without leaking sensitive information outside the company data boundary. And that’s not all – employees can easily summarize, rewrite or get insights from files or documents by simply uploading them in chat and prompting Copilot. Enterprise data protection applies to prompts, responses and uploaded files, and they are stored securely to protect your organization’s data. Copilot Chat also offers Pages, a persistent, digital canvas within the chat experience that lets employees collaborate with Copilot to create durable business artifacts. 

Copilot is the UI for AI 

Copilot is your UI for AI—a single, user-friendly entry point where employees can readily access AI-powered agents without needing specialized technical knowledge. These agents help employees save time, boost productivity, and streamline daily tasks. Now, with Copilot Chat, these agents are available to all employees, even without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license—ensuring that AI-powered assistance is accessible across the organization. 

Employees can use agents to automate repetitive tasks, retrieve information from SharePoint and connected data sources, and support specialized workflows like customer service or field troubleshooting. They can also build their own agents using Agent Builder in Copilot Chat, while IT admins can create and manage organization-wide agents through Copilot Studio. 

With flexible pay-as-you-go access, organizations can integrate AI-powered automation at their own pace, deploying agents where they drive the most impact. Agents are priced based on metered consumption and can be managed through the Power Platform Admin Center or, coming soon, the Microsoft 365 Admin Center—see our documentation for more information. As businesses refine their AI strategy, they can easily scale usage and expand to full Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities to maximize value. 

Enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy 

Copilot Chat offers enterprise data protection. That means it protects your data with encryption at rest and in transit, offers rigorous security controls, and maintains data isolation between tenants. Copilot Chat prompts and responses are protected by the same contractual terms and commitments widely trusted by our customers for their emails in Exchange and files in SharePoint, including support for GDPR, EUDB support, and our Data Protection Addendum. Prompts and responses are logged, can be managed with retention policies, and can be included in eDiscovery and other Purview capabilities. We also help safeguard against AI-focused risks such as harmful content and prompt injections. For content copyright concerns, we provide protected material detection and our Customer Copyright Commitment. Additionally, Copilot Chat offers granular controls and visibility over web grounded search, which enhances responses from the latest data from the web. Furthermore, you can have confidence that Copilot Chat is fully supported - just as you would expect from Microsoft’s enterprise services.

Bringing Copilot Chat to your Organization 

Customers can start with either the free or paid experience in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, available at M365Copilot.com or in the Windows, Android, or iPhone app stores. 

To help your organization get the most out of the new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, we’ve updated the Copilot Success Kit and added the new Copilot Chat and Agent Starter Kit. This includes: 

• Copilot Chat and agent overview guide to help your users learn how to use agents to make Copilot Chat even more personalized and intelligent for their daily work. 

• Copilot Chat and agent IT setup and controls guide to plan, deploy, manage, and measure Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat in your organization. 

• User engagement templates in a variety of formats—including email, Viva Engage, and Teams—that you can leverage to communicate updates and new features to your users. 

*Available at no additional cost for all Entra account users with a Microsoft 365 subscription