Four reasons to enable Bing Chat Enterprise in your Microsoft 365 environment

The TL;DR version:

Security
Privacy
Security
Privacy

And no, it’s not a mistake that those points are doubled-up. In this day and age, far too much information leaks on the Internet. Sometimes it is due to malicious actors, sometimes simply due to lack of awareness of how the data will be used.

ChatGPT in the workplace

The rise of ChatGPT has been phenomenal to say the least.

While we in the IT industry joke about Net Promoter Score prompts in Windows (no Microsoft, I do not spontaneously talk to my friends about Windows 11 at a BBQ) – the reality is that almost anyone you talk to has heard about ChatGPT, regardless of industry or job role. As a result, many people are using ChatGPT and other Generative AI services to come up with content or find results – as it’s a great way to spark the creative flow, and even do some of the heavy lifting.

“While Bing has for years been the butt of many jokes, the reality is that it’s actually a decent search engine – and one that many use as the default search experience in their Edge browser. For the past few years, Bing’s usefulness has improved by integrating with Microsoft 365 and providing results from our work environments. So, while staff may be searching externally, Bing could actually provide results right under their nose.”
Loryan Strant

More recently, Bing integrated with ChatGPT to offer Bing Chat – a way of using conversational AI to search for things, but also to have things done for you. And what I mean by that, is that could have entire blog posts like this one written for you:

However, something you may not have noticed in the above prompt is the text “Your personal and company data are protected in this chat” – and that brings us to the key points: security & privacy.

Bing Chat vs. ChatGPT

Before diving into Bing Chat Enterprise, let’s understand what Bing Chat is. To oversimplify it, Bing Chat is ChatGPT – in Bing. Whatever you would do in ChatGPT, you can do in Bing. Is it any different?

At face value, no. However, Microsoft has worked to integrate it into the Edge browser for easier access. What can be confusing though, is that some of the marketing language used describes the new Bing as “your AI-powered copilot for the web”. Copilot… copilot… CoPilot… Co-pilot… I’m sure we’ve heard about that somewhere…

Bing Chat Enterprise vs. Copilot

The first thing to address is that Bing Chat Enterprise is not Copilot, or any aspect of it. Copilot is many different things, using the underlying AI engine – but surfaced in different areas of Microsoft products (e.g. Power Apps, Power Automate, Microsoft 365, GitHub, and others).

While it is conversational, fundamentally Bing Chat Enterprise is the same as Bing Chat – except that your data is protected. What this means is that search terms you type, data or information you enter, and potentially sensitive information are not stored by the underlying platform. Additionally, your identity is removed from all search queries – meaning there is no correlation back to you or your organisation.

Why you should enable it, NOW

The reality is that your staff are using public services like ChatGPT to generate content. And for those who haven’t changed their default browser to be Chrome or Firefox, and haven’t changed their default search engine in Edge to be Google – most likely they’re using Bing Chat.

Which means, whatever they type goes into the public learning model and may end up as a result in someone else’s search – someone not in your organisation. Bing Chat Enterprise will give those users the same functionality as if they were using Bing Chat or even ChatGPT, but securely, and privately. And as Bing Chat Enterprise is available for use by most Microsoft 365 users without any additional cost – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be turned on immediately.

Enabling Bing Chat Enterprise is an incredibly simple process:

Ensure the Microsoft Search in Bing setting is enabled
Click on https://aka.ms/TurnOnBCE to opt-in (must be a Global Admin or Search Admin)
Wait 2-4 hours for it to be enabled
Ask it to summarise why you are the best Microsoft 365 admin and deserve a raise for doing this
Send the results to your boss and watch for your next payslip