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Clarifications regarding Microsoft Copilot

Copilot is a brand that Microsoft uses for a family of ChatGPT-like products based on LLM models such as GPT-4 . Microsoft is actively expanding the Copilot family of products, sometimes reusing the Copilot brand for older products previously known under a different name.

In particular, the free product previously known as Bing Chat is now known as Microsoft Copilot, which is a generative AI-assistant build on top of Bing search, allowing users to submit text or image inputs and converse with an online computer-powered chatbot and in certain circumstances generate text or image content.

The goal of this article is to clarify which product from the Microsoft Copilot family is available under the current contract with Microsoft and what personal data protection features it provides.

Before deciding whether to use Copilot or not, please read Copilot Terms of Use and determine if it is adapted to your use case.

Microsoft Copilot editions

Microsoft advertises the following Copilot editions:

  1. Free of charge Copilot for personal accounts, which can be used by anybody without any connection to CERN,
  2. Paid Copilot PRO for personal accounts, not available at CERN,
  3. Copilot with Commercial Data Protection for work accounts, included for CERN accounts with A1/A5 subscriptions at no additional cost,
  4. Paid Copilot for Microsoft 365, not available at CERN.
Copilot Editions
Copilot Editions

Microsoft also advertises other Copilot products, none of which are available under CERN’s current contract with Microsoft. In particular, GitHub Copilot is not included in the current contract with Microsoft.

How to use Copilot with Commercial Data Protection

There are various ways of accessing Copilot. It can be accessed on the web at https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/, using a mobile app or – on self-managed Windows devices – even directly from the Windows taskbar search field. This last functionality is turned off on CERN-managed Windows devices to make sure that any use of Copilot at CERN is based on a conscious decision of the user rather than based on an accidental use of a new feature recently introduced by Microsoft.

When you use Copilot using any of these interfaces, log on with your CERN “Work or School” account to benefit from the Commercial Data Protection. You will see the green “Protected” sign when Commercial Data Protection is enabled.

Copilot with Commercial Data Protection
Copilot with Commercial Data Protection

Data privacy for Copilot with commercial data protection

The data that is collected from prompts and responses lives as long as the session.

Sessions are temporary and cannot be saved. The session is closed when the browser tab is closed or when the current login times out. Chat history is not available.

No organisational data other than the one directly provided in the chat is accessed by Copilot. Organisation and user information is removed from the chat data at the start of a session.

None of the data provided is used to train the underlying LLM model.

No usage reports and auditing are available to administrators of the Organisation.

To provide chat responses, Copilot uses global data centres for processing and may process data in the United States. Optional Bing-backed connected experiences don't fall under Microsoft's EU Data Boundary (EUDB) commitment.

More information about Copilot with commercial data protection is available at the following links: