Several things are called Copilot. This is the free app — what it reaches, and what it won't.
The full script, word for word — 580 words, about 3 minutes to read. Current as at August 2026. AI tools change quickly; if something looks different when you try it, check the product's own help pages.
Hi, I’m Mel. This is Microsoft Copilot — the free assistant for everyday questions, writing, research, images and voice. It runs on the web, on Windows and Mac, on your phone, and inside Microsoft Edge. Before we go anywhere near what it does, we need to sort out which Copilot this is.
Microsoft puts the name Copilot on a lot of things, and the overlap causes confusion. This video is about the free one, at copilot dot microsoft dot com. It is not the Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook — that comes with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription, and at work it depends on your employer’s licence. GitHub Copilot is a separate product for writing code. A Copilot plus PC is a kind of computer, not a subscription.
Signed in with a personal account, this is the free product — chat history, image creation, longer conversations and voice. You can use Copilot without signing in, but you lose those. Down the left, Tasks is in preview: Copilot running a job for you rather than answering a question, with Discover and Experiments alongside. Along the bottom, Microsoft states plainly that your conversation activity helps train its models — a setting worth changing, and I will show you where.
One control in the composer changes how hard Copilot works on your question. The quick setting is fine for most things. The slower one is for problems worth thinking about. The names in this menu change often, so learn the idea rather than the labels: you are trading speed against depth.
The plus control is where the rest of the free product lives. Add images or files and ask questions about them. Generate a picture from a description. Run a longer piece of research, or turn a topic into a spoken summary you can listen to. Some of these are limited on the free plan. And at the bottom: connectors.
Free Copilot can connect to your own accounts — OneDrive and Outlook mail, calendar and contacts, plus Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Then you can ask it to find a file, pull up an email or check tomorrow’s diary. Each one is opt-in and can be switched off. Microsoft says it keeps no copy and does not train on that data. What you connect, Copilot can read — so connect deliberately.
In Microsoft Edge, Copilot opens beside the page you are already reading. You can ask it to summarise what is on screen, pull the key numbers out of a table, or answer a follow-up without leaving the tab. It is the same free assistant, sitting closer to your work. You choose when to open it, and what page it sees.
Open Settings and go to Privacy. Two separate switches decide whether your typed conversations and your voice conversations help train Microsoft’s models, and both can be turned off. Below them you can manage personalisation and memory, and clear your history whenever you want. And if you want a conversation that leaves no trace, Temporary chat keeps it out of your history, out of memory and out of training.
Start free with one ordinary job — tidy up a message, summarise a page you are reading, or ask about something you would normally search for. Keep confidential work material out of it, and open the sources behind anything you plan to act on. Copilot is capable and it is close to hand. Just be clear about which Copilot you have.