Originally published Nov 1, 2023. Revised and expanded Nov 4, 2024.
On November 1 2023, Microsoft officially launched its highly anticipated Copilot AI. This is an incredible tool for Microsoft customers. From Word to Teams, Outlook to Excel, Copilot can comb your internal data, interpret it, create deliverables, offer insights, and much more.
If that sounds a lot like ChatGPT, it is… and it isn’t.
In fact, it’s crucial to understand the differences between these tools if you’re going to make informed policy decisions for your organization. This is especially true if you’re not getting help from Copilot consulting or training. You’ll want to understand the cybersecurity implications of various generative AI tools.
Here’s everything you need to know about Microsoft Copilot vs. ChatGPT.
1. Is Microsoft Copilot built on ChatGPT technology?
No. Both Copilot and ChatGPT are LLMs (large language models), but they aren’t built on the same technology.
That said, Microsoft allows users to access ChatGPT-4 Turbo technology through Copilot in addition to using Copilot’s native LLM technology. Microsoft and OpenAI have an official business relationship, and as Microsoft puts it, the two companies “are working together to develop the underlying AI. Microsoft is developing and providing the supercomputing infrastructure that OpenAI services run on.”
For many use cases, Copilot and ChatGPT behave similarly. However, they’re actually very different products. ChatGPT is a more generic tool with access to public data, while Copilot is designed to work securely with your company’s proprietary data.
Here’s what that means for you.
2. Copilot vs. ChatGPT: The basics
Copilot and ChatGPT are superficially similar in one regard. As LLMs, they both operate on written prompts and produce written results.
However, that’s where the similarity ends. From datasets covered to use cases and more, these two AIs are vastly different.
In a nutshell, Microsoft has taken their AI engine and wrapped it around SharePoint, OneDrive, and the rest of Microsoft 365. The result works like a personal assistant that understands all proprietary organizational data to which it has access. It’s so good, you may want to help your personal assistant find a new career.
Both Copilot and ChatGPT are available in several different versions—some free, some paid. (See Pricing below for details.) For the full comparison, download our FREE chart.
Want to compare these AIs side-by-side?
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While ChatGPT can also function as a personal assistant, there’s one huge difference: ChatGPT doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have access to your organization’s internal data.
Let’s unpack that.
3. Copilot and ChatGPT use wildly different datasets
ChatGPT’s answers reflect the dataset on which it’s been trained. By definition, none of your organization’s internal data makes it into that dataset—at least we hope it doesn’t. If it does, you have a larger problem, which we’ll cover when we get to cybersecurity (#6 below).
In contrast, Copilot is fully integrated into your Microsoft 365 environment. It works within the sphere of your internal data, and it can give context-specific answers that apply to your operations. This has profound implications for use cases, cybersecurity, and copyright considerations, which we’ll explore in a moment.
4. Copilot beats ChatGPT for both internal and external operations
Microsoft Copilot business use cases
As an integrated Microsoft product, Copilot is incredibly versatile. It has too many use cases to cover them all here. For a larger overview, check out this page from Microsoft. Click on every Microsoft application logo to see what Copilot can do in different contexts.
That said, here are a few easy ways to use Copilot to improve productivity in day-to-day work.
Drafting an important email or document. Like ChatGPT, Copilot can produce written communications for you. If it’s tough to wrap your mind around the main points you should cover, Copilot can write for you.
Finding files after consolidation in Sharepoint and OneDrive. For organizations that still use shared folders and mapped network drives, it’s stressful to imagine the move to cloud storage. People worry that they won’t be able to find their files. While it might sound crazy, your team actually won’t need to know where their files are. Copilot can find files with simple, natural-language prompts.
Getting the important points from a Teams chat. Let’s be honest, instant messaging has its place, but it can also bury important information as new things come up. Copilot can read chats for you, detect action items, and summarize what you need to know in a few bullets.
Summarizing an email chain (and what the team needs from you). Let’s say your boss sends you an email about the budget, referencing other email chains as well as Teams chats on the subject. Copilot can summarize the situation for you and explain in plain language what your boss is looking for.
Note that ChatGPT can’t access any of your organization’s proprietary data (unless someone makes a big mistake—more on that below). Using ChatGPT securely will place a significant limit on what the AI can do to interpret internal data and advise on operations, whether internal or external.
That said, here are some common use cases for ChatGPT.
Producing written content, provided: 1) you’re not including sensitive information in the prompt, 2) you don’t mind the fact that other ChatGPT users could generate the same content that the AI is giving you, 3) you don’t mind the fact that you don’t own the copyright for the output content, and 4) someone else may already own the copyright for the output content.
Writing basic code. ChatGPT can help developers solve coding problems, although its output may not be optimized or even accurate. Also consider the fact that code can be copyrighted.
Generating customer service responses, including translation into different languages. ChatGPT excels at helping customer service agents respond to communications quickly while maintaining a positive, professional voice. The application can also translate written content to assist with cross-language customer support.
This list is by no means exhaustive. However, you can see the difference in the use cases. ChatGPT can’t (or shouldn’t)function as a personal assistant with access to your organization’s proprietary information. Microsoft Copilot is designed to work this way while protecting your information.
5. Copilot beats ChatGPT in terms of copyright implications
When an organization hires a human creator to produce intellectual property for them, the organization owns the copyright for that material, which falls into the category of work-for-hire.
Things get a little murkier when we look at AI-generated content.
ChatGPT copyright
When it comes to ChatGPT, there are two sides to the copyright question.
Can you copyright the output of ChatGPT? The answer is most likely no.
Can ChatGPT give you copyrighted material as an output, with no indication that it’s copyrighted? Potentially, since the AI has ingested copyrighted material. Note that OpenAI’s terms of service attempt to shift all risk of copyright violation back to the user.
Organizations using ChatGPT should do their due diligence to understand these implications—particularly if they’re using the AI for public-facing content for which they will claim copyright (for example, a blog post or website page). For internal communications like a quick email to a colleague, the risk of copyright violation may be less significant. However, other risks remain, and you should consult your legal counsel to get the full picture.
Microsoft Copilot copyright
Microsoft doesn’t claim any copyright for the output of Copilot. Whether organizations using Copilot can claim copyright for its output is unclear.
That said, Microsoft has committed to defend customers in court who are accused of copyright infringement for their use of work generated by Copilot. Of course, Microsoft provides stipulations and limitations for this commitment. Any organization using Copilot should understand these limitations and set guidelines for employees on how to use the AI.
While Microsoft’s commitment isn’t a silver bullet, it’s more than anyone gets from OpenAI. Remember how OpenAI’s terms of service shift all responsibility for copyright compliance to the end user.
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6. Copilot and ChatGPT are tied on factual reliability
From listing non-existent books about President Lincoln to doing math wrong, ChatGPT is gaining a bit of a reputation. It’s not an all-knowing source of facts, but rather a stochastic text generator. It doesn’t “know” things in the way that a human being does.
The same is true of Copilot. As Microsoft explains:
“Copilot is designed to provide accurate and informative responses, based on the knowledge and your data available in the Microsoft Graph. However, answers may not always be accurate as they are generated based on patterns and probabilities in language data. Responses include references when possible, and it’s important to verify the information.”
In other words, whether you’re using ChatGPT or Copilot, you still need to fact-check anything coming out of the AI.
7. Copilot beats ChatGPT on cybersecurity
ChatGPT cybersecurity
Some sources advocate feeding proprietary information to ChatGPT so the chatbot can “inform employees using that company’s private data.” In theory, this would approximate the use of Copilot to deliver proprietary, context-specific information to employees. But it’s actually a terrible idea.
Why?
As TechTarget explains, “the publicly available version of ChatGPT uses [information entered in prompts] to learn and respond to future requests.”
In other words, you should assume you have no privacy whatsoever when you type a prompt into ChatGPT.
It’s one thing to explain this to your employees or include it in cybersecurity awareness training. But the fact is, an employee may choose to enter sensitive information anyway. This could be due to malicious intent, or to non-malicious intent coupled with a disregard for the rules.
Either way, the outcome is the same. Employees can expose your data if they type sensitive information into a ChatGPT prompt.
Microsoft Copilot cybersecurity
Here’s where Copilot really stands out. The security of your business data is baked right in. As Microsoft explains, “Copilot unlocks business value by connecting LLMs to your business data in a secure, compliant, privacy-preserving way.”
Furthermore—and this is the most important part—the article goes on to state:
“Microsoft doesn’t use customers’ data to train LLMs. We believe the customers’ data is their data, aligned to the Microsoft’s data privacy policy… Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft 365 Graph and Microsoft services aren’t used to train Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform for use by other customers. The foundation models aren’t improved through your usage. This means your data is accessible only by authorized users within your organization unless you explicitly consent to other access or use.”
In other words, Microsoft gets it. They respect your organization’s privacy, and your data isn’t going to leak out through LLM responses to other customers.
Here at Corsica Technologies, we love seeing this commitment. It gives us confidence when we recommend Copilot to customers. We know it won’t affect their cybersecurity posture—and improving that posture is one of our passions.
8. Copilot and ChatGPT have similar pricing
Both Microsoft and OpenAI have evolved their offerings to fit business vs. personal use cases, as well as different team sizes in a business scenario. Looking at pricing alone, the two tools appear to be very similar—but remember everything else we’ve covered so far. The tools are very different, though their tiers are priced similarly.
| Microsoft Copilot | ChatGPT |
Free version | Copilot Free | ChatGPT Free |
Paid version | Copilot Pro ($20/mo.) | ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo.) |
Business version | Copilot for Microsoft 365 Business ($30/mo.) | ChatGPT Team ($25-30/mo.) |
Enterprise version | Copilot for Microsoft 365 Enterprise ($30/mo.) | Chat GPT Enterprise (quote required) |
Pricing models may change frequently as both companies continue to refine their AI technologies. To get the latest pricing, visit each company’s website:
9. Microsoft Copilot requires more preparation, but that’s a good thing
ChatGPT isn’t integrated into Microsoft 365 by default. It runs on public data, and it shouldn’t have access to your private data in M365. This means you can start using ChatGPT right away—without cleaning up your organization’s data.
Microsoft Copilot is different. Since it’s deeply integrated into your Microsoft 365 environment, you won’t get the most out of the tool if you simply turn it on. Rather, you’ll need to engage in Copilot consulting services to get your environment primed for the AI.
Naturally, since Copilot is deeply integrated into your organization, your teams can get more out of it than ChatGPT. With the right preparation, Copilot becomes an AI that knows your company rather than a generic AI.
Here are the preparations that we usually recommend.
- Build consensus with your leadership team.
- Review all data sources that Copilot will access.
- Consolidate and clean up these data sources.
- Make sure your user permissions are set up properly.
- Implement DLP (data loss prevention).
- Put a compliance framework in place.
- Establish monitoring and system logs.
- Establish AI usage policies.
- Determine what you’ll disclose to customers.
- Train your employees on using Copilot.
Learn more here: Microsoft Copilot Requirements.
While Copilot requires more preparation than ChatGPT, think of it this way. Because Copilot is deeply embedded into your Microsoft environment, you’re actually getting much more out of the tool than ChatGPT can provide. You get what you pay for in terms of preparation, training, and data readiness.
10. Can you download Microsoft Copilot and/or ChatGPT?
The answer depends on whether you’re using Copilot or ChatGPT for business or personal use. If you want to use the free version of each tool, downloading is easy.
Note that you can also use each tool online, from within a web browser.
Of course, using paid versions of these tools in a business context is a little more involved. You’ll have to license the tool and pay your first invoice to get started. Learn more:
11. Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT for coding
Both tools offer powerful capabilities for coding. Which tool is best will depend on what you’re doing, how complex the task is, and whether you need to give the chatbot access to any proprietary or copyrighted code.
First off, both ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot allow you to set up custom instructions. This feature allows you to tell the chatbot some things about your coding environment and your desired outputs. This way, you don’t have to answer the same questions over and over. You can tailor the chatbot’s output for your unique technology environment.
This is a great feature, and both tools offer it—though of course, outputs may vary, and that variance will depend greatly on your prompts.
When it comes down to understanding and outputting code, ChatGPT may have more power and flexibility, as demonstrated in this video.
However, keep in mind the cybersecurity concerns surrounding ChatGPT. Theoretically, anything entered in a prompt can be returned to any user in an output. If you need your chatbot to analyze proprietary or copyrighted code, entering it in ChatGPT could expose your intellectual property to other ChatGPT users in the future. In this regard, Microsoft Copilot may be a better choice, as the tool protects your proprietary information by default.
Copilot vs. ChatGPT: The takeaway
For Microsoft customers, there’s really no contest. Copilot beats ChatGPT any day, on any task.
Why?
Because Copilot protects your organization’s proprietary data and offers context-specific results based on that data. You just can’t get that one-two punch from ChatGPT.
Here at Corsica Technologies, we’re excited to see where our customers go with Copilot. This is only the beginning, and it’s a great time to jump in and start optimizing your operations with AI. The key is to engage expert AI consulting services to maximize the value of AI at your organization. Reach out to us today, and let’s explore what Copilot can do for your business.