General AI assistants
Microsoft Copilot
AI built into Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, answering from your own files and email. Renamed from Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2026.
Good for
- Drafting and summarising inside the apps your team already uses
- Summarising a Teams meeting or a long Outlook thread
- Pulling an answer out of policies and documents already in SharePoint
- Organisations that already pay for Microsoft 365 and want one supplier and one contract
Watch out for
- It surfaces anything the member of staff can already open. If your SharePoint permissions are loose, Copilot turns that into a search engine. Fix permissions before you switch it on.
- The UK is not inside the EU Data Boundary. UK queries may be processed in the United States unless you buy Advanced Data Residency, which commissioners may ask about.
- It is an add-on. You need a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan first, so the real cost is the licence plus Copilot.
- Prices exclude VAT, which a small provider budgeting from the headline figure will feel.
- Microsoft says its output is not guaranteed factual and expects a person to review it before it goes anywhere.
Before you choose it
Take our question sheet to any conversation with the supplier.