Understand Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

  • 3 minutes

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is enterprise-ready AI chat available at no additional cost to your Microsoft 365 subscription. It’s your AI assistant for work, combining the power of the latest large language models (LLMs) with web-based insights to help you with tasks like summarizing, brainstorming, writing, coding, and searching. It provides intelligent suggestions and automates repetitive tasks to make your work easier. Copilot Chat includes:

  • Secure, AI chat grounded in the web and powered by GPT-5.

  • A side-by-side experience that's aware of a user's open content in select Microsoft 365 apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook.

  • Pay-as-you-go agents accessible from chat, and priced on a metered basis.

  • IT controls, including enterprise data protection and agent management.

  • Features like Copilot Pages, file upload, and image generation.

Note

File upload and image generation limits may apply. A SharePoint license is required to use Pages.

Tip

"Grounding" is the data that the AI uses to do what you ask it to do. LLMs are the engine that drives Microsoft 365 Copilot. They help Copilot understand your questions and provide helpful, human-like answers.

Whether researching industry insights, analyzing data, or looking for inspiration, Copilot Chat gives users access to better answers, greater efficiency, and new ways to get their work done through chat and agents. Copilot Chat also adheres to our AI principles..

GPT-5 in Copilot Chat

GPT-5 is the latest and most advanced AI model from OpenAI, integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.

  • Enterprise-ready: Delivers cutting-edge AI while maintaining your existing security, compliance, and privacy settings.

  • Adaptive performance:

-Routine questions: Copilot uses GPT-5’s high-throughput model for fast, succinct answers.

-Complex or open-ended prompts, it switches to GPT-5’s deep reasoning model, crafting detailed, context-aware responses.

  • Real-time routing: Copilot dynamically selects the best GPT-5 model based on your prompt for optimal results.

Add a Microsoft 365 Copilot license

Copilot Chat becomes even more powerful, building on other Copilot Chat features, when you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license in addition to your standard Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft 365 Copilot includes:

  • Chat grounded in work sources (files, meetings, emails, and chats) and priority access to capabilities like file upload and image generation, and reasoning capabilities and models (like GPT-5).

Note

By default, Copilot Chat uses web mode, grounding responses in public web data for research, brainstorming, and up-to-date information. If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you’ll see a toggle for work and web modes. The toggle allows you to switch between grounding your prompts in work or web data. Work mode connects Copilot Chat to your organizational data such as files, emails, meetings, and chats, so you can draft documents, summarize meetings, and manage tasks directly in your work. Both modes provide generative AI services but serve different purposes to help you be more productive.

  • Integration in Microsoft 365 Copilot apps like Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more, with advanced skills and in-app editing.

  • Comprehensive access to agents, including Analyst & Researcher advanced reasoning agents, prebuilt Microsoft agents, and custom agents grounded in your data.

  • Additional Copilot Control System value like SharePoint Advanced Management and Copilot Analytics.

Tip

Microsoft Graph is a system that connects and maps your Microsoft 365 data. Copilot uses the Graph to find and pull together information to give you helpful, work-related answers.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat vs. Microsoft 365 Copilot license

The following diagram compares the key Copilot Chat features between a standard Microsoft 365 subscription and a Microsoft 365 subscription with a Copilot add-on license:

Diagram of Microsoft 365 subscription features compared to a Microsoft 365 subscription with a Copilot add-on license.

Tip

If you’d like to learn about the features and benefits of adding a Copilot license to your Microsoft 365 subscription, take our course: view Transform business workflows with generative AI.