Multiple Account Access in Microsoft 365: A Step Toward Solving Shadow AI

Is this the solution to Shadow AI?

Yesterday, I focused on the new Microsoft 365 Premium license for consumers that replaces Copilot Pro. However, there is an important evolution of consumer Copilot services that shouldn't pass without notice: Multiple account access to Copilot.

As a baseline, if you have a Microsoft 365 business or enterprise license, you get access to Copilot Chat in the web app and now also in most of the Microsoft 365 apps. But you do not get access to specific Copilot capabilities in these apps as this is reserved for a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

However, with multiple account access, if you have Microsoft 365 Copilot granted to you through a paid consumer account, you can log in your Microsoft 365 app with that consumer (Microsoft) account and the in-app capabilities of Copilot from that license will be granted to your Entra ID (Work or school) account that lacked Copilot in the context of that app.

There are certain Microsoft 365 Copilot features that are not available in this set-up such as Graph grounding beyond the open file in the app itself or work content access in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, but if you specifically want the Copilot-based app capabilities, this license arrangement grants this.

The business data never leaves the business tenant, the use is covered by Enterprise Data Protection, and all content access is governed solely by the access rights of the Entra ID account. Administrators can turn off this option through Cloud Policy if this is desired.

In a world of Shadow AI this is an interesting innovation to allow users to bring their own AI (BYOAI) to work and goes to demonstrate the potential power of Microsoft's extensive ecosystem that bridges work, school, and home. There is certainly great potential from this type of approach, but also a lot of barriers that might stand in the way of this getting wide acceptance.

First posted on Linkedin on 10/10/2025 -> View Linkedin post here