Co-Pilot ChatBot Frequently Asked Questions

Positive Purchasing’s Co-Pilot chatbots are powered by the GPT-4o model, which allows them to understand and respond to a wide range of user inquiries conversationally. They can support category strategy or negotiation plan creation, assist with procurement research, and even provide personalized recommendations based on user inputs in multiple languages.

These chatbots are specifically customized for procurement and negotiation, integrating training data that’s stored in Azure Blob Storage. This means their responses are more relevant and knowledgeable about industry topics.

The Positive Purchasing Co-Pilot AI agents use a process called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This means the AI first retrieves information from trusted company materials, then uses it to generate a clear and relevant answer. These materials are stored safely in Azure Blob Storage (Microsoft’s secure cloud storage system). To add more context or up-to-date details, the Co-Pilot AI agents can also use Bing Search grounding, which lets them find reliable information from the public web through Microsoft’s Bing Search service.

When the Co-Pilot AI uses Bing Search grounding, its answers may include citations (references) and a link to the Bing search query that found the information. Microsoft requires these so users can see and verify the original web sources used to support the response.

The chatbots are hosted on Microsoft Azure, leveraging Azure’s AI capabilities and securely storing data in Azure Blob Storage.

Azure Blob Storage is used to store the data that powers the knowledge base of the chatbots. This data is indexed and queried when the bots receive user questions, ensuring that responses are accurate.

When Bing grounding is active, the system only sends the search query (what the AI is looking for) and a few technical details needed to run the search to Microsoft. This happens outside of Positive Purchasing’s Azure environment. No personal information, user identities, or private chat data are shared. Microsoft handles this search process as an independent data controller, under its Privacy Statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com.

Text prompts and outputs are stored by Positive Purchasing for monitoring and safety purposes. Chat logs are retained per user, not company-wide, unless specifically requested. More information on data storage can be found in P5-402-D02 Positive Purchasing Chatbot Policy and on the Terms of Use page: https://positivepurchasing.com/chatbots-terms-of-use/

As stated by Microsoft, ‘the data submitted to the Azure OpenAI Service remains within Microsoft Azure and is not passed to OpenAI (the company) for model predictions.’

‘Azure OpenAI processes text prompts, queries and responses submitted by the user via the completions, search, and embeddings operations. Azure OpenAI stores and processes data to provide the service, monitor for abusive use, and to develop and improve the quality of Azure’s Responsible AI systems. No prompts or completions are stored in the model during these operations, and prompts and completions are not used to train, retrain or improve the models.’

Positive Purchasing and Microsoft each manage their own parts of the process as independent data controllers. Positive Purchasing is responsible for any data within its Azure systems and storage. Microsoft is responsible for anything processed by the Bing Search service, following its own privacy and compliance rules.

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