Microsoft now lets workers bring personal Copilot to work

Bringing AI to work just got easier, according to Microsoft, as employees with a personal Microsoft 365 account can now use their Copilot AI assistant in Office documents at work. 

Microsoft announced the change in a blog post Thursday. It means that users with Microsoft 365 Personal, Family and Premium plans (the latter of which launched this week) can use Copilot features in apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in the office, regardless of whether their employer has an enterprise Microsoft 365 Copilot license. 

“This offers a safer alternative to other bring-your-own-AI scenarios, and empowers users with Copilot in their daily jobs while keeping IT firmly in control and all enterprise data protections intact,” said Samer Baroudi, product marketing manager at Microsoft. 

To use the Copilot features, employees sign in to Microsoft 365 (M365) with both their work and personal accounts using multiple account access. When they open an Office file, they can then use Copilot features such as summarization or text drafting in Office as usual.

There are limits, however. More advanced functions — such as the abilty to access an organization’s Microsoft Graph data, or ask questions about other files in the M365 tenant — requires a full M365 Copilot license.

The personal Copilot can only access files and data for which the employee already has permission to use, Microsoft said, and all Copilot actions are auditable by IT. Admins can also disable personal Copilot access for some or all users, should they choose to do so. (It’s enabled by default.)

According to Microsoft’s own survey data, 82% of employees already use unsanctioned AI tools at work.

The prospect of the company endorsing “bring your own AI” at work might sound alarming at first, but the Microsoft move shouldn’t trouble IT teams much, said Dan Wilson, vice president analyst at Gartner. “What Microsoft is essentially promoting is a way to sell personal Copilot licenses that could potentially be leveraged for work purposes, with little to no risk or ramification on enterprise data protection or identity, because that all still gets maintained,” said Wilson.

“So it’s not bring your own AI, it’s bring your own Copilot license,” he said. 

Wilson likened the capability to the free Copilot Chat that can be enabled in enterprise M365 deployments: it also has limited access to corporate data because it’s  grounded in web data rather than a business’s own content.  

Still, enterprise IT and security teams should be wary of how the capability functions in practice, said Jeff Pollard, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “While Microsoft’s announcement offers assurances that its existing data protection mechanisms apply and it will stay in the Copilot service boundary, it’s going to have to prove that. And security researchers — and hackers — will attempt to see if those assertions are true,” he said. 

One consideration is who pays for Copilot and whether employers should receive any compensation for using their personal license. It’s similar to the rise of “bring your own device” policies of a decade or so ago, said Wilson, and might require an update to an organization’s policies. 

For businesses, the ability of employees to use their own Copilot tools could bolster  productivity and help employees become more familiar with AI in the workplace, said Pollard. It could also place pressure on M365 customers to pay for the 365 Copilot, he added, if employers are already using the AI assistant internally. 

“That’s a sales tactic as much as it is a technology announcement,” he said.

Enabling employees to use their own Copilot license offers Microsoft a “land and expand” strategy that can grow adoption and encourage customers to adopt the enterprise Copilot —  which costs $30 per use each month — across their workforce, said Pollard. 

If successful, it could drive enterprise licensing while users continue to pay for their personal version, potentiallyopening up other revenue streams from business customers.

“Once the company adds Copilot to its enterprise licensing, well, next up comes Purview and its associated suite of offerings so you can protect, prevent, detect, and respond to data issues,” he said. “So your spend with Microsoft keeps increasing.”