The AI-Safe Desk · Module 1: Where the words go
Consumer, business, internal: three different tools with the same name
The same product name can mean three different things. The consumer version, on a personal or free account, is built for individuals and comes with consumer terms. The business or enterprise version, licensed by your employer, comes with a contract that usually promises no training, limited retention, and a data processing agreement your organisation has signed. An internal deployment, where your IT team runs the model inside the company's own cloud, keeps the text inside systems your organisation controls.
This matters because people move between them without noticing. They use the work-licensed tool at their desk, then open the free one on their phone in the evening to finish something, and the second paste has none of the protections of the first.
A simple rule: know which of the three you are in before you paste, every time. The icon looks the same. The contract behind it does not. Microsoft's work and personal Copilot now share one app and one name, so check you are signed in with your work account.
| Version | Typical position |
|---|---|
| Consumer / free | Consumer terms. Training and history often on by default. No agreement with your employer. Treat as public. |
| Business / enterprise licence | Contract with your employer. Usually no training, limited retention, a data processing agreement. Treat as a work system. |
| Internal deployment | Runs inside your organisation's own cloud. Governed by internal policy. Treat as any other internal system, and follow that policy. |
In practice. A finance analyst had Copilot through his employer's Microsoft licence and used it to summarise board papers. Perfectly reasonable. One evening, working late from home, he pasted the same paper into a free chatbot on his personal laptop because it was quicker.
Same document, same task, same person. One paste was covered by a contract his company had negotiated. The other was covered by nothing.
At your desk. List every AI tool you have used in the last month, at work and on personal devices. Next to each, write consumer, business or internal. Circle any that you have used for work but which are consumer versions.
Write it down.
- Tools I use that are consumer versions:
- Tools my employer actually licenses:
- The one I need to stop using for work: