Microsoft 365 Now Includes Copilot Chat – Here’s What You Get Without Paying for Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now available at no additional cost to users with eligible Microsoft 365 business subscriptions.

That means your business may already have access to Microsoft's AI-powered Copilot Chat without purchasing a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

But there is an important distinction.

Copilot Chat is not the same as the full, paid Microsoft 365 Copilot experience.

The included version gives business users access to secure AI chat, web-based research, content generation, file uploads, image generation and a growing range of Copilot features. It can also work alongside content in selected Microsoft 365 applications.

The paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence goes considerably further by allowing Copilot to reason across your wider business information — including emails, meetings, Teams conversations, SharePoint content and files you already have permission to access.

So, if your business already pays for Microsoft 365, the question is no longer simply “Should we buy Copilot?”

A better starting point is:

“What can we already do with Copilot Chat without paying for an additional Copilot licence?”

What Is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat?

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is Microsoft's AI chat service for people using eligible work or school Microsoft accounts.

At its simplest, you can think of it as a secure AI assistant that you can ask questions, give instructions and use to help produce or analyse content.

You might ask Copilot Chat to:

• research a subject;
• summarise information;
• explain a complicated topic;
• draft an email or document;
• rewrite existing text;
• generate ideas;
• compare different options;
• analyse information in an uploaded file;
• help structure a report;
• produce an initial project plan; or
• generate an image.

For businesses that haven't yet experimented with AI, this means there is now a useful starting point sitting within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem they already use.

Who Gets Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat?

Copilot Chat is available at no additional cost to users signed in with an eligible Microsoft work or school account.

For SMEs, eligible subscriptions include common Microsoft 365 plans such as:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic;
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard;
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium;
• Microsoft 365 E3;
• Microsoft 365 E5; and
• various other eligible Microsoft and Office 365 subscriptions.

This means many businesses may already have users who can access Copilot Chat even though the organisation has never purchased a dedicated Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

If you're unsure which Microsoft 365 plan your business currently uses, our guide to Microsoft 365 Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium explains the main differences between Microsoft's most common SME subscriptions.

What Can You Do With Copilot Chat Without Paying for Copilot?

Quite a lot.

The included version of Copilot Chat can use AI to answer questions, produce content and reason over information from the web.

For example, a user could ask:

• “Explain the difference between these two products.”
• “Draft an agenda for a customer review meeting.”
• “Give me ten ideas for promoting this service.”
• “Rewrite this paragraph so a non-technical customer can understand it.”
• “Summarise this document and identify the five most important points.”
• “Research the main issues affecting our industry this year.”
• “Turn these notes into a structured proposal.”

Those are practical everyday tasks that don't necessarily require Copilot to search through your company's entire Microsoft 365 environment.

For many employees, Copilot Chat may therefore provide more than enough functionality to start learning where AI genuinely saves time before the business considers paying for additional Copilot licences.

Can Copilot Chat Work With Documents?

Yes.

Copilot Chat supports working with files, which means you can provide a document and ask Copilot questions about its contents.

For example, you could provide a document and ask Copilot to:

• summarise it;
• extract important points;
• identify actions;
• explain technical terminology;
• compare information;
• suggest improvements; or
• produce another piece of content based on it.

This is different from giving Copilot unrestricted access to search everything in your business.

That distinction is one of the biggest differences between Copilot Chat and the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

Can Copilot Chat Access Your Company Emails and Files?

Not in the same way as a full Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

Without the paid Copilot licence, Copilot Chat is primarily grounded in web information and content that is made available to the Copilot experience.

Microsoft has also introduced Copilot Chat experiences alongside selected Microsoft 365 applications, and in some situations Copilot can work with the content you currently have open.

Capabilities vary by application and by licence.

What the included Copilot Chat does not provide is the same organisation-wide work-data grounding available with paid Microsoft 365 Copilot.

With a full Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, Copilot can use Microsoft Graph to reason across work information the user is already authorised to access, such as:

• emails;
• calendar information;
• Teams chats;
• meetings;
• OneDrive files;
• SharePoint content; and
• other Microsoft 365 organisational data.

This allows considerably more contextual questions.

For example, a licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot user might ask:

“What did we agree with this customer in our last Teams meeting, and are there any outstanding actions in my email?”

That is very different from ordinary web-grounded AI chat.

Can Copilot Chat Be Used in Outlook?

Microsoft has increasingly integrated Copilot Chat into its Microsoft 365 applications, including Outlook.

Eligible users can access Copilot capabilities in Outlook, although what Copilot can do depends on whether the user has the additional Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

Without that paid licence, capabilities are more limited.

With the full licence, Copilot can make much broader use of the user's work context and Microsoft 365 data.

This distinction matters because seeing the word “Copilot” inside Outlook does not necessarily mean that the user has been given a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

What About Word, Excel and PowerPoint?

Copilot Chat is becoming increasingly visible alongside Microsoft 365 applications, but businesses shouldn't assume that the included Copilot Chat provides every advanced AI feature associated with paid Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The full paid licence provides deeper integration and advanced capabilities within applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services.

For example, the value of paid Copilot is not simply that it can generate text.

Its bigger advantage is its ability to combine the application you're using with the context and information contained elsewhere in your Microsoft 365 environment.

Is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Secure for Business Use?

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat provides enterprise data protection when eligible users sign in with their work or school account.

This is an important distinction between using a business-managed Copilot environment and employees casually copying company information into arbitrary consumer AI services.

Microsoft states that prompts and responses covered by enterprise data protection are subject to Microsoft 365 security, privacy and compliance protections.

Microsoft also states that prompts and responses from Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat aren't used to train the underlying foundation models.

That doesn't mean businesses should simply tell every employee to put any information they like into AI.

Organisations should still have sensible policies covering:

• what information employees are allowed to provide to AI tools;
• confidential and client information;
• personal data;
• verification of AI-generated answers;
• copyright and intellectual property;
• who is responsible for AI-generated work; and
• which AI services employees are approved to use.

AI security is partly a technology issue, but it is also increasingly a matter of business governance and employee training.

Does Microsoft Use Your Copilot Chat Data to Train AI?

For Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat used with an eligible work or school account under enterprise data protection, Microsoft states that prompts and responses are not used to train the underlying foundation models.

That's a significant point for businesses considering whether to provide employees with an approved AI tool.

However, users still need to understand that AI-generated results can be inaccurate.

Copilot should therefore be treated as an assistant rather than an unquestionable source of truth.

Important facts, calculations, contractual wording and business decisions should still be checked by an appropriate person.

Should Your Business Pay for Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Not necessarily — and certainly not automatically for every employee.

The availability of Copilot Chat at no additional cost gives businesses a much better opportunity to assess AI before committing to additional licensing.

Some users may get significant value from the included Copilot Chat experience alone.

Others may have roles where access to their wider Microsoft 365 work context creates considerably more value.

For example, paid Microsoft 365 Copilot may be more compelling for employees who regularly:

• handle large volumes of email;
• attend numerous Teams meetings;
• work across many documents;
• produce reports and presentations;
• research information scattered across SharePoint and OneDrive;
• manage projects involving multiple people and information sources; or
• need to find and combine information from across Microsoft 365 quickly.

By comparison, somebody whose role only occasionally requires AI assistance may find Copilot Chat perfectly adequate.

Don't Buy Copilot Licences Before Understanding the Use Case

This is where businesses can easily waste money.

Giving a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence to every employee simply because AI is becoming important doesn't necessarily produce a return on the additional licence cost.

A better approach is to identify:

• which employees already have access to Copilot Chat;
• which tasks could realistically benefit from AI;
• which users need work-data integration;
• whether employees understand how to use AI effectively;
• what security and governance controls are required; and
• whether the time saved justifies the additional licensing cost.

This can lead to a mixed approach where some employees use the included Copilot Chat while selected roles receive the full Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

That is often more sensible than treating Copilot licensing as an all-or-nothing decision.