Starting in late August 2026, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on your phone will gain a recording feature, which will be enabled by default for users with a Copilot license. It can record an in-person conversation or a voice memo, upload the audio file to the user’s OneDrive, and deliver a transcript and summary in Copilot Chat. For a small business, the risk isn’t technical, but rather behavioral and legal: the app doesn’t notify the other participants when it starts recording.
What the function does, in a nutshell.
- Record in-person conversations or voice memos—up to 120 minutes per recording—even with the app running in the background.
- After you stop recording, the audio file is uploaded to the user’s OneDrive for Business, and the transcript and summary appear in Copilot Chat.
- It is enabled by default for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license and can be turned on from the prompt box menu in Copilot Chat on iOS and Android.
The technical side is, in fact, well managed. The feature inherits OneDrive’s permissions and governance, so your retention policies, sensitivity labels, DLP, and eDiscovery apply, and Microsoft states that it does not use recordings, transcripts, or summaries to train its models. The problem lies elsewhere.
The app does not notify other participants when recording begins. Obtaining consent remains the user’s responsibility, and laws regarding the recording of conversations and GDPR obligations apply as before. In a company with 10–50 employees, this means that an employee can record a client, a supplier, or a coworker without their knowledge—and the consequences fall not on the employee’s phone, but on the company.
Our recommendation is simple and costs nothing. First, find out which employees in your company have a Copilot license: for those users, the feature is enabled by default. Then make a conscious decision whether to leave it active and write a one-page internal policy on recording and consent—no client or colleague should be recorded without being notified—and inform everyone, not just the administrator. If you have Intune, the feature can be completely disabled via an app configuration policy. If you don’t have Intune, your best options are the written policy and a discussion with the team.
The announcement is published by Microsoft in the MC1437679 management post, with roadmap entry 498640: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/roadmap?searchterms=498640
This article was generated with AI assistance.