Overview of Microsoft Copilot Chat

Microsoft Copilot Chat is a secure AI chat experience available to eligible Microsoft 365 users. It combines large language models (LLMs), enterprise-grade protections, and grounding from web data and, in specific contexts, organizational data to help users find information, create content, and complete tasks.

The following video provides an overview of Microsoft Copilot Chat. It's 2 minutes and 4 seconds long.

Copilot Chat (Basic) is the standalone baseline experience included with eligible Microsoft 365 licenses. Organizations can use Copilot Chat as a secure AI assistant while enabling additional capabilities through Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and agents.

Screenshot that shows Microsoft Copilot Chat taskbar.

Note

Copilot Chat includes standard access to capabilities like file upload, image generation, and models (like GPT-5). This means it's subject to service capacity availability to ensure the product works well for everyone. Quality and performance might also vary depending on service availability. If the service isn't available at a given moment, Copilot notifies the user—it doesn't interrupt a task in progress.

If you'd like to enable users with priority access to these capabilities, learn how to upgrade your Copilot subscription.

Where to access Copilot Chat

Users can access Copilot Chat from:

Note

Copilot experiences in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote might vary depending on your organization's licensing and tenant configuration. In-product labels are displayed in Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and in the Microsoft Copilot app to help users identify their Copilot experience.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) or Microsoft 365 Copilot (Pro) indicates that a user has a Microsoft Copilot add-on license and the full experience and priority access for Copilot chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic) indicates that a user doesn't have the Microsoft Copilot add-on license but has standard access to Copilot in those apps to ensure a reliable experience.

Copilot Chat (Basic) indicates that a user doesn't have the Microsoft Copilot add-on license and doesn't have access to Copilot chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

To enable users with priority access to these capabilities, learn more about the add-on license for Microsoft Copilot.

What you can do with Copilot Chat

Copilot Chat can help users:

  • Research and summarize information from the web.
  • Generate and rewrite content.
  • Analyze uploaded files and documents.
  • Create images.
  • Interact with agents.
  • Ask questions about supported organizational content in specific Microsoft 365 experiences. For more information on organizational content, see access content from your organization.

Model selection in Copilot Chat

Copilot Chat offers the latest models tailored to your business needs without changing your security, compliance, and privacy settings. Users can select different models using the model selector at the top right of the UI. By default, Copilot uses a real-time router to adjust the underlying model it uses based on your prompt.

  • Auto: Copilot determines which model to use while in the default "Auto" mode.
  • Quick response: For common or routine questions, Copilot prioritizes speed, using a high-throughput model to craft quick, succinct responses to straightforward questions.
  • Think deeper: For complex or more open-ended questions, Copilot may detect that the prompt requires advanced reasoning. In these cases, Copilot uses a deeper reasoning model, taking its time to craft a plan, gather and comprehend all relevant context, and check its work before providing a thorough response.

How grounding works in Copilot Chat

The information available to Copilot Chat depends on where users access Copilot Chat and whether they have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

The following table summarizes grounding across Copilot Chat, Copilot Chat in Outlook, and the Microsoft Copilot licensed experience.

Experience Grounding
Copilot Chat (web/app) Web + user-provided content + supported app context
Copilot Chat in Outlook Inbox, calendar, meetings, chats, and limited related content
Microsoft Copilot licensed experience Graph API, Work IQ + semantic indexing across Microsoft 365

Copilot Chat outside Outlook

Copilot Chat is primarily web grounded. Depending on the experience, users can also provide organizational content through uploaded files, supported app context, or agents.

Users can also provide organizational content directly by:

  • Copying and pasting content into a prompt.
  • Uploading files.
  • Referencing supported files.
  • Using agents that have access to organizational content.

Without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, in outside supported experiences such as Outlook, Copilot Chat doesn't provide the broad Microsoft 365 organizational grounding that's available through Work IQ and semantic indexing in Microsoft Copilot. Organizational grounding is limited to content explicitly provided or supported in-app experiences.

Copilot Chat in Outlook

Copilot Chat in Outlook provides additional organizational grounding for eligible users, even when they don't have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. In Outlook, users can ask questions across supported content, such as emails, calendar items, meetings, chats, and a bounded set of files and related content.

To use Copilot Chat in Outlook, users must meet the requirements for supported Outlook experiences. For detailed client, mailbox, licensing, and configuration requirements, see Chat with Copilot in Outlook.

Here are some example prompts to try:

Summarize my emails from the last week related to Project Alpine.

When is my next 1:1 with my manager?

Draft an email update summarizing customer escalations from this week.

This experience uses a limited set of organizational content and reduced graph grounding compared with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot Chat continues to respect existing Microsoft 365 permissions and doesn't expose content that users can't already access.

Important

Copilot Chat in Outlook provides organizational grounding that goes beyond the currently open item. However, the Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed experience continues to provide broader organizational grounding through Work IQ and semantic indexing across Microsoft 365 content.

Eligibility requirements for Copilot Chat

Using Copilot Chat doesn't require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. For more information, visit Microsoft Copilot Chat eligibility.

Also see License options for Microsoft Copilot.

Government cloud considerations

Feature availability can differ across commercial, GCC, GCC High, and DoD environments.

In addition, web grounding isn't enabled by default in some government cloud environments. Administrators should review environment-specific documentation when planning deployments.

For more information, see:

Security and permissions

Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot respect existing Microsoft 365 permission models.

Copilot:

  • Only accesses content you're authorized to access.
  • Doesn't grant access to additional organizational content.
  • Applies Microsoft security, compliance, privacy, and governance controls.
  • Includes enterprise data protection for eligible work and school accounts.

Organizational content remains subject to existing Microsoft 365 permissions, retention policies, sensitivity labels, and compliance controls.

For more information, see:

The Microsoft Copilot licensed experience

A Microsoft Copilot license extends Copilot capabilities through broader organizational grounding through Graph API, Work IQ, and semantic indexing. With a paid Microsoft Copilot license, Copilot can reason across a wider set of organizational data, including:

  • Emails
  • Meetings
  • Calendars
  • Chats
  • Documents
  • Sites
  • Files
  • Other Microsoft 365 content that users have permission to access

The Microsoft Copilot licensed experience also provides:

  • Priority access to Copilot capabilities
  • More comprehensive organizational grounding
  • Priority access to advanced reasoning experiences and models
  • Access to advanced agents and agent experiences
  • Integration across Microsoft 365 applications and workflows

For example, a licensed user can ask Copilot to synthesize information across emails, meetings, chats, and documents to generate a response that spans multiple sources of organizational content.

For more information, see:

Compare Copilot Chat to Microsoft Copilot

The following table summarizes the primary differences.

Capability Copilot Chat Microsoft Copilot
Web-grounded chat Yes Yes
Enterprise data protection Yes Yes
File uploads and analysis Yes Yes
Image generation Yes Yes
Outlook organizational grounding in supported experiences Yes, within supported Outlook scenarios Yes
Broad organizational reasoning across Microsoft 365 data Limited Yes
Graph API, Work IQ and semantic indexing No Yes
Advanced agents and agent experiences Limited Yes
Priority access No Yes

For more information, see Find the right Copilot to meet your needs.

Next steps

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