AI Exposure · Office suite
What Microsoft 365 Copilot actually does with your data
The AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. It can reach whatever the signed in person can reach.
- Trains on your data
- Microsoft says no
- Processed
- Microsoft's cloud, not always the UK
- Can you turn it off
- Yes, if someone looks
- Verified
- 2 July 2026, against Microsoft's published documents
What AI is in it?
- Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Drafts, rewrites and summarises using your documents and email as its raw material.
- Copilot in Teams. Recaps meetings and answers questions about what was said, using the meeting transcript.
- Copilot Chat. A general chat assistant included with Microsoft 365 business plans, so it is often in the building even where nobody has bought Copilot licences.
Does your data train AI models?
Microsoft says no.
Microsoft states this plainly: "prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs". That commitment is published, and it is part of what the licence buys. The question that takes up the rest of this page is not training. It is reach.
Where is your data processed?
Microsoft's cloud, not always the UK.
Your prompts and Copilot's answers stay inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary, under the same contractual promises that already cover your email and documents.
The geography is less tidy than that sounds. Microsoft routes AI processing to the nearest data centre with capacity, and says queries from customers outside the EU may be processed in the US, the EU or other regions. The UK sits outside Microsoft's EU Data Boundary, so a UK charity should assume Copilot processing can happen abroad unless it has bought a data residency add on.
And as of 2026 Microsoft also uses Anthropic's models for some Copilot features, under Microsoft's own data protection terms, and says those are out of scope for its EU Data Boundary commitments.
What changes between free and paid?
Paid add on, free chat.
Full Copilot is a paid add on licence per person. But Copilot Chat comes included with business plans, which means charities that decided not to buy Copilot often have a version of it switched on anyway.
If your organisation uses Microsoft 365, the realistic starting assumption is that some Copilot is already available to staff.
Can your organisation turn it off?
Yes, if someone looks.
Administrators can control who gets Copilot and Copilot Chat. The control that matters more is older and duller: permissions.
Copilot can surface anything the signed in person already has access to, so years of loose sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive suddenly become findable by anyone who asks the right question.
What does this mean for the people you support?
Copilot does not need new access to be a change. It reaches whatever the signed in person already reaches, which means a folder nobody has looked at since 2019 is now one question away from being read aloud.
If case notes, safeguarding records or HR files sit in SharePoint or OneDrive, the sharing settings you have never audited are the setting that governs them.
What to check this week
- Find out what is actually switched on. Ask whoever manages your Microsoft 365 whether Copilot licences are assigned and whether Copilot Chat is available to staff. Do not assume the answer is no.
- Check permissions on your most sensitive libraries. Pick the two or three SharePoint areas holding case notes, safeguarding or HR records and review who can see them. Copilot inherits exactly these permissions.
- Decide your rule for meeting recap. Agree which meetings must never have AI recap or transcription turned on, and tell the people who run them.
Sources
Everything above is my plain English reading of what Microsoft publishes. The originals:
- Microsoft: Data, privacy, and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot (updated 2 June 2026) reviewed 2 July 2026
Vendors change these documents quietly and often. If you spot something out of date, email me and I'll re-verify the entry.
The switches exist. Has anyone looked?
The controls above mostly exist, and they live in settings your organisation already owns. So the real question is not about Microsoft. It is whether anyone has ever opened those settings and looked.
In most small organisations the answer is no. The account was set up years ago, the AI arrived later by licence change rather than decision, and it reads with whatever permissions years of sharing and forgotten folders have left lying around.
The checklist above is the afternoon's work. Working out what has quietly accumulated, and what the AI can now do with it, is what I look at inside a discovery. And Microsoft 365 Copilot is unlikely to be the only AI in your building.
See your whole toolkit at once
This page covers one tool. The AI Exposure Report Generator covers your toolkit: tick the tools your charity uses and get one report showing what the AI inside each of them does with your data, as a Word document you can table at your next meeting. Free, and nothing you tick leaves your browser.
The Report Generator, start to finish: tick your tools, read your exposure, download the report.
Read the other tools
The same questions, answered for every tool in the directory.
Your office suite
Microsoft 365 Copilot
The AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. It can reach whatever the signed in person can reach.
You are here
Google Workspace with Gemini
Gemini inside Gmail, Docs, Drive and Meet. Google says your content is not used to train models outside your domain. What it can reach is the longer answer.
Verified 3 July 2026 →AI chatbots
ChatGPT
The one your staff are probably already using. What happens to what they type depends entirely on whose account it is.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Google Gemini
Google's chatbot, one tap away on Android phones, in Chrome and in search. On a personal account, the training switch is on until someone finds it.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Claude
Anthropic's chatbot. The same personal versus organisational story as the others, with the training question put to you as a setting.
Verified 2 July 2026 →Meeting notetakers
Otter.ai
The notetaker that joins your meetings, and can invite itself to the next one. What it hears may help train its AI.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Microsoft Teams
The meeting recorder your charity already owns. Everything it captures becomes a file in OneDrive and SharePoint, where the rest of the AI can reach it.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
Zoom AI Companion
The AI inside the video calls much of the sector runs on. Zoom's no training promise is unusually specific, and there is a reason it is worded that way.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Fathom
The free notetaker that arrives one personal install at a time. The recordings live in the US, and the training answer has two halves.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Charity CRMs
Beacon
A UK charity CRM with AI on every plan since 2024. Beacon publishes where your data sits and how to switch the AI off, which leaves one question to ask them directly.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Donorfy
A UK charity CRM where the AI mostly arrives through the side door: optional integrations. What you connect decides where your supporter data goes.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
CiviCRM
The open source CRM ships no AI of its own. What that is worth to you depends on which CiviCRM you are running: one your organisation hosts, or a hosted product somebody sells you. Everything below splits along that line.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
Salesforce
In much of the sector through ten free licences. The AI paperwork is detailed and mostly reassuring, with one default that runs the other way.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Accounts
Xero
Your accounts package now has an assistant called JAX. Xero says your data is not used to train its AI, and names the AI companies your questions travel to.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
QuickBooks
Intuit's accounts package now has an assistant throughout. Its privacy statement says your information is used to train its AI models, and it says so in as many words.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Marketing and design
Mailchimp
Your supporter mailing list lives here, and Mailchimp belongs to Intuit now, which means the same small print as QuickBooks covers it.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
Canva
The design tool half the sector lives in, free through Canva for Nonprofits. Whether your uploads help train AI depends on whose account they sit in.
Verified 3 July 2026 →