Microsoft declares bring your Copilot to work day, usurping IT authority (www.theregister.com)

Microsoft has quietly enabled a "bring your Copilot to work" capability that lets employees sign into Microsoft 365 apps with both personal and work accounts and use Copilot features from personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions (Personal, Family, Premium) on business documents — even when their employer hasn't purchased a Copilot license. Redmond frames the move as a pragmatic embrace of "shadow IT," saying it will manage and enable personal AI use rather than try to block it. The functionality is not available to certain government tenants (GCC/DoD). For IT and the AI/ML community this is significant because it accelerates workplace AI adoption while scrambling traditional governance models. Microsoft insists enterprise protections remain intact: access and file permissions are enforced by the user’s Entra (work) identity, admins can block personal Copilot use via cloud policy controls, audit interactions, and apply identity, permission and compliance policies. Critics note this effectively endorses shadow IT and raises questions about prompt/data capture — employees’ prompts and Copilot responses can be visible to employers — and whether Microsoft will count personal Copilot usage in enterprise adoption metrics. The shift highlights a trade-off: faster AI rollout versus new operational and privacy challenges for IT, compliance, and security teams.