"What's in a name? That which we call a rose Copilot Chat by any other name would smell as sweet." If Shakespeare were alive today, he may have said that about Microsoft's habit of frequently changing app and service names. While writing an article the other day about Copilot BizChat relaunching as Copilot Chat, it occurred to me this offering has already had 4 names in just 23 months since it was first unveiled.

So let's do a walk down history lane and do a short recap of Copilot Chat's history and the various iterations and names it has been known by.

As OpenAI's ChatGPT started to take the world by storm, Microsoft launched – in Public Preview – a chat feature integrated with Bing search aptly named Bing Chat in February 2023. This would either appear as a sidebar in the Bing search or take over the full screen for an immersive experience. This tool was powered by an OpenAI GPT model and meant for mass consumption (i.e., no specific protections for business data). In July 2023, Microsoft added a separate but similar Public Preview option aimed at businesses called Bing Chat Enterprise. It worked just like Bing Chat but offered Enterprise Data Protection (EDP) when users were logged into their Microsoft 365 Work or School tenant.

Hero image from Bing Chat Enterprise announcement (Image Source: Microsoft)

In September 2023, Microsoft announced Copilot for Microsoft 365 general availability (GA) along with a new experience inside the Microsoft 365 portal called Microsoft 365 Chat, which would replace Bing Chat experience for organizational users logged into Microsoft 365. Bing Chat Enterprise would continue to exist as a paid $5/month feature at this time.

From Microsoft 365 Chat announcement in September 2023 (Image Source: Microsoft)

In December 1, 2023, all of these experiences became generally available (GA) and were renamed under a "Microsoft Copilot" branding.

The Microsoft Copilot brand would also include a host of other generative AI and productivity features across the full suite of Office apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams in addition to the chat experience.

By this point in time, we had two editions of Microsoft Copilot:

  1. A free web-grounded chat experience available on Bing as well as on Microsoft Edge browsers and in Windows 11
  2. An experience that offered both chat (but with EDP) as well as Copilot features in Office apps with a per-user-per-month license

Each edition was further fragmented into a Personal Use and Organizational Use category:

Personal Use:

  • Microsoft Copilot for free chat (available on Bing, in Edge, in Windows 11, and as a mobile/tablet app for Apple and Android devices
  • Microsoft Copilot Pro at a price point of $20/user/month
    • Includes the Copilot chat experience as well as Copilot AI & productivity experiences for Office apps
    • For consumer versions of Microsoft 365 (i.e., Office apps for Home and Student use which are sold directly through Microsoft and retail channels)
    • Neither Copilot Pro nor these home/student editions of Microsoft 365 can be sold by Microsoft Partners
    • Uses Microsoft Account authentication (Outlook.com, etc.)

Organizational Use:

  • Microsoft Copilot "Web" as a free chat experience in the M365 portal (microsoft365.com/chat) with EDP
  • Copilot for Microsoft 365 at a price point of $30/user/month
    • In addition to the Copilot "Web" chat experience, it also includes a Copilot "Work" chat experience (more on that in the paragraphs below) as well as Copilot AI & productivity experiences for Office apps
    • Meant for use by businesses, enterprises and the educational sector (i.e., requires a qualifying subscription of Office apps in a Microsoft 365 Work or School tenant with Azure AD / Entra ID authentication)
    • Sold by the Microsoft Partner channel or direct from Microsoft

Over subsequent months, we saw yet more rejigging of product names and divergence in the development roadmap as more functionality was added.

The Copilot chat experience for Personal Use got a massive refresh with focus on a consumer friendly user interface, addition of voice chat (like ChatGPT) and more.

On the other hand, the Copilot chat experiences for Organizational use (i.e., Copilot for Microsoft 365) grew in features that enhance productivity for business users such as the ability to collaborate with co-workers, work with documents in SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, vectorized data in the Microsoft Graph for superior search capabilities with semantic indexing. Essentially it is a chat experience grounded in knowledge and data from your organization.

At Ignite in November 2024, Microsoft added even more features such as the ability to create personal agents grounded in knowledge from SharePoint documents and announced that autonomous capabilities would be coming soon. Along the way, the Work and Web chat experiences for Organizational Use were also collectively given the name Copilot Business Chat (Copilot BizChat in short).

The Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat experience today (January 2025). Work and Web toggle shown because this is from a tenant with a paid subscription of Copilot for Microsoft 365.

This brings us to this week's announcement on January 15, 2025 that these chat experiences for organizations have yet again been renamed from Copilot Business Chat to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (or just Copilot Chat). They will still have the Work and Web toggle allowing them to pick the desired experience.

Surely, this won't be the last change we will see. But until the next time something changes, consider yourself all caught up.