Microsoft Copilot

Last updated: October 21, 2024
Audience: All UW

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Overview

Microsoft Copilot is a chatbot developed by Microsoft and launched on February 7, 2023. Based on a large language model, it is able to summarize content, create new content, and cite its sources. It is Microsoft’s primary replacement for the discontinued Cortana service.

Copilot utilizes the Microsoft Prometheus model, built upon OpenAI’s GPT-4 foundational large language model, which in turn has been fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. The chatbot’s conversational interface style resembles that of ChatGPT. Copilot is able to communicate in numerous languages and dialects.

The service was introduced as Bing Chat, as a built-in feature for Microsoft Bing and Microsoft Edge. Over the course of 2023, Microsoft began to unify the Copilot branding across its various chatbot products.

As part of UW Office 365, we offer Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection. One of Microsoft’s other primary Copilot offerings – Copilot for Microsoft 365 – is not yet available for purchase.

Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection

Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) is enabled for UW faculty, staff, students, UW Medicine Workforce members, and Shared UW NetIDs enabled for UW Office 365.

Copilot provides access to powerful AI and is built on the multimodal large language model GPT-4 and the text-to-image model DALL-E 3. It’s grounded in the Bing search index to provide responses with the most current information and verifiable citations for transparency.

Compared to the free version of Copilot, Copilot with commercial data protection means both user and organizational data are protected:

  • Prompts and responses aren’t saved
  • Microsoft has no eyes-on access to the chat data
  • Chat data isn’t used to train the underlying large language models
  • Copilot has no access to organizational data via the Microsoft 365 Graph API

Learn more:

Important: Copilot’s commercial data protections mode does not preclude following UW privacy policies.

Advertising in Copilot chat responses

Copilot occasionally shows advertisements as part of chat responses. An ad that appears in a chat response is triggered by any queries generated by the user’s prompt, not their workplace identity.

Advertising to Entra ID users isn’t targeted, meaning no information from the user’s workplace identity is used to determine the ad that appears. Entra ID users won’t be retargeted by ads they previously interacted with in Copilot.

Learn more:

Access Copilot

There are several different ways to access Copilot with commercial data protection. Because Copilot (without commercial data protection) is free and available to use by anyone, you must sign into Copilot with your UW Microsoft 365 Account in order to gain commercial data protection. If you do not, you are using the generally available version of Copilot, without commercial data protection.

You must sign into Copilot with your UW Microsoft 365 account in order to utilize the commercial data benefit.

bing.com

To access Copilot with commercial data protection in Microsoft Bing:

  • Go to bing.com
  • Select “Sign in” at the top of the page
  • Select “Sign in with a work or school account“
  • Select your UW email address account or enter your UW email address
  • Log in with your UW NetID

Now you should see your UW email address as the user signed in to Bing. When you click the Copilot icon, you can verify that you are using Copilot with commercial data protection by:

  • The presence of a green “Protected” icon in the upper right corner of the screen
  • The presence of the text “Your personal and company data are protected” above the chat window

copilot.microsoft.com

To access Copilot with commercial data protection at copilot.microsoft.com:

  • Go to copilot.microsoft.com
  • Select “Sign in“
  • Enter your UW email address and select “Next“
  • Enter your UW NetID password and select “Sign in“

Now you should see your UW email address as the user signed in to Copilot. You can verify that you are using Copilot with commercial data protection by:

  • The presence of a green “Protected” icon in the upper right corner of the screen
  • The presence of the text “Your personal and company data are protected” above the chat window

App for iOS & Android

To access Copilot with commercial data protection on an iOS or Android device:

  • Download the app
  • Log in with your UW email address as prompted
  • Log in with your UW NetID as prompted

Now you should see your UW email address as the user signed in to the Copilot app. You can verify that you are using Copilot with commercial data protection by:

  • The presence of a green “Protected” icon at the top of the app
  • The presence of the text “Your personal and company data are protected” above the chat window

Other ways to access Copilot with commercial data protection

There are other ways to access Copilot including in the Edge browser and in Windows though it may be more difficult to determine if you are using Copilot with commercial data protection. As a result, the recommended ways to access Copilot and ensure you are utilizing the additional commercial data protection is to use the methods mentioned above.

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 brings powerful new capabilities to productivity tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, including features for document summarization and content generation within these applications. It is not yet available for purchase at the UW.

UW-IT is currently conducting a pilot of Copilot for Microsoft 365 to:

  • Better understand potential risks to data security and privacy
  • Ensure sufficient support and training
  • Understand for whom and for which tasks Copilot for Microsoft 365 is most useful

The pilot findings will provide the data needed to determine whether to offer Copilot for M365 as an enterprise service.

The 200 pilot participants represent all levels of the University and UW Medicine. Participants have been intentionally chosen to represent a diverse cross-section of the University community to capture the most useful feedback. The pilot is expected to run for roughly 90 days, concluding on July 31, 2024.

Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot for Microsoft 365

Microsoft Copilot (with commercial data protection) will have the word “Protected” prominently displayed after logging in with your UW NetID:

Snipped of Copilot page with purple arrows pointing to the word Protected and the slider set to Web.

  • In this mode, Copilot is accessing public data on the web, not information within the UW.
  • Unless you are participating in the May 2024 pilot for Copilot for Microsoft 365, you will not see the toggle slider for Work/Web.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 (Work or organization restricted) will display UW in a black bar at the top of the screen and the toggle slider is set to Work:

Snippet of Copilot with a purple arrow pointing to the slider set to Work.

  • In this mode, Copilot is accessing data available only within the UW organization.
  • Only individuals participating in the UW pilot will see the toggle slider for Work or Web.

Note: depending on how Copilot for Microsoft 365 is accessed, there will be variance in its appearance (web vs. installed apps vs. desktop vs. Edge browser).

Additional information