The Connector Is Already in the Building
Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude can now read your company files with each person's own permissions. Here is how to clean up before they do.
By John Martines · September 27, 2026 · 7 min
The big three AI assistants now reach SharePoint and other company files directly, and each one sees exactly what the signed-in person can see. That sounds safe until you remember who can open the old HR folder. Find the over-shared folders first, pilot on one clean site, and decide who may connect AI at all.
This isn't a new AI product you have to decide whether to buy. It's a switch inside tools your people already use, and some of them may have flipped it this month.
As of late September 2026, the three mainstream assistants all reach company files where they live. Microsoft 365 Copilot has always worked that way. ChatGPT added SharePoint, Dropbox and Box to its Library on September 10. Claude's Microsoft 365 connector searches SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams. None of them needs anyone to upload a file.
And all three follow the same rule: the AI sees what the signed-in person can already see. Nothing more.
"Only what they already have access to" is the right design. It's also only as good as your permissions. And in most small businesses, permissions are a decade of "just share it with everyone so I stop getting asked."
Microsoft says it plainly in its own Copilot readiness guidance: by default, SharePoint sets sharing to the most permissive option.
So think about what's actually sitting there. The folder from the 2019 reorganization. A spreadsheet of salaries somebody saved to the team site because it was easier than email. A scanned stack of signed contracts. A former employee's OneDrive that got shared out when they left. Before AI, those files were technically open but practically invisible. You had to know the folder existed, and you had to go looking.
Now you don't. You ask, "What did we pay the last three hires?" and the assistant goes looking for you. It isn't breaking anything. It's using the access you already gave out.
The connector doesn't create the exposure. It makes it searchable.
| Tool | What it reaches | Who turns it on | |---|---|---| | Microsoft 365 Copilot | Your tenant's files, mail, meetings and chats through Microsoft Graph, within existing permissions and sharing settings | Comes with the Copilot license | | ChatGPT Library | SharePoint, Dropbox and Box (joining Google Drive), on paid plans on the web; OpenAI says it follows the source system's permissions | Users connect their own accounts; in Business and Enterprise workspaces, admins decide which connected apps are available and what they can do | | Claude Microsoft 365 connector | SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams, acting as each individual user | A Microsoft Entra Global Administrator grants one-time consent for the tenant; available on every Claude plan, Free included |
Two details matter more than the rest.
First, Claude's connector also has write tools — sending email, managing calendar events, creating and updating files, posting Teams messages. Anthropic ships those turned off by default, and an admin has to enable them. Leave them off until the read-only side has earned its keep.
Second, that consent step in Claude's setup is the kind of gate every AI connector should pass through. One person with the right role approves the app for the whole company. That's exactly where you want the decision to live.
1. Find the over-shared folders first. Before anyone connects anything new, look at what's wide open. If your Microsoft licensing includes SharePoint Advanced Management, the SharePoint admin center has data access governance reports built for this. Start with two. The "Everyone except external users" report shows the sites where content was shared with your entire organization in the last 28 days. The sharing links report shows which sites have the most "Anyone" and "People in the organization" links. No reports? Ask whoever manages your Microsoft 365 to pull a list of sites shared with everyone, and walk it together. An hour is enough for a first pass.
2. Fix the worst few, not all of them. You won't clean a decade of sharing in a week, and you don't have to. Pick the folders that would hurt — payroll, HR, contracts, customer financials, anything with health or banking details — and close them down to the people who actually need them. Microsoft's Restricted Access Control can lock a SharePoint site to a named group, so even old links stop working for anyone outside it.
A free account opens the rest of this article and the whole library.