Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant
What is Copilot
Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant that aims to provide personalised assistance for a range of tasks and activities. It is integrated in a number of apps across the Microsoft 365 suite but only the 'Copilot for Microsoft 365' service uses your data in Microsoft Graph for responses. It does not use your prompts or data to train the underlying large language models (see Microsoft's website: 'Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365')
Copilot does not have special access to data in our tenant and only has access to data that the user running Copilot has access to.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
This was formerly known as 'Microsoft Copilot' or 'Bing Chat Enterprise', and requires no additional license or cost.
Note you must be signed in with your @cam.ac.uk account to enable commercial data protection. With this enabled prompts and responses aren't saved and chat data isn't used to train the underlying large language models. Despite the name, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has no access to organizational data in the Microsoft 365 Graph. When it is enabled you will see the following above the text box:
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat
Also known as 'Bizchat', if you have a Copilot license this offers the same function as Copilot Chat but can also query your work content, such as chats, email, and files via Microsoft 365 Graph. You will see a toggle for 'work' and 'web' to set the context and can access via web, mobile, and desktop versions of the Microsoft 365 app, Teams, and Outlook. Enterprise data protection applies and prompts are not used to train the underlying large language models.
Copilot for Microsoft 365
Copilot integrates with Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams, and PowerPoint.) It can summarise and generate content based on existing files and emails.
You must buy a licence, in addition to the existing A3 or A5 license, to use Copilot with Microsoft 365. This costs around £300 per annum, per user.
Teams Premium also offers AI-generated meeting summaries of meeting recordings. This feature is called Intelligent Recap and is not part of Copilot. A Teams Premium licence costs £20 per user, per annum. You can only use this for meetings held after upgrading to a Teams Premium licence.
What are the benefits?
- Generate topic summaries with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
- Quickly amend operating system settings and perfom tasks with Copilot in Windows
- Summarise meetings and emails with Copilot for Microsoft 365
How do I access it?
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/ in Microsoft Edge or Chrome browsers.
You can also download the desktop app from this Microsoft store link.
(Note that this differs from the 'Microsoft Copilot' app and Copilot for Windows app which can only be used with personal Microsoft accounts and do not offer enterprise data protection.)
Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat: Complete a service request to purchase a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. Your account must have an A3 or A5 license in the University Office365 tenancy.