Shield adds Copilot and image OCR to compliance surveillance

Shield has expanded its communications surveillance platform to capture Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts and AI responses and to extract text from image attachments. Captured content is routed into Shield’s existing archive, search, case management, surveillance and export systems.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is in use at more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Barclays, UBS and Lloyds Banking Group have deployed the tool to nearly 200,000 employees. For many firms, employee prompts to Copilot and the generated AI responses have not been archived or monitored.

U.S. and European regulators have clarified that recordkeeping obligations apply regardless of channel or format. FINRA Rule 4511 and a 2026 oversight report require firms to retain and make business communications searchable. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has warned that firms without plans to address unmonitored risks are “a long way from meeting our expectations.”

Shield added a native connector that captures every Copilot prompt and response and routes those interactions into its compliance workflows. Copilot exchanges are processed end-to-end in under 24 hours, with metadata preserved to support audits and investigations. The integration uses the same controls firms apply to other channels and does not require separate portals or new workflow tools.

The platform extracts text from image attachments using optical character recognition. Text from screenshots, photographed documents and scanned files is indexed and analyzed so it becomes searchable and available for e-discovery. When trigger terms are detected, the system highlights keywords inline beneath the image to reduce manual review. Shield validated the features through prototype testing with multiple customers and built them into its unified surveillance pipeline.

A 2026 surveillance benchmarking report found 67 percent of banks consider applying surveillance across multiple channels a major challenge. The same report found 22 percent of firms now monitor more than 30 channels, up from 14 percent two years earlier. Screenshots and photographed documents have become routine in business communication, while the text inside them has often been treated separately from native message surveillance.

Tamar Sharir Beiser, chief product officer at Shield, commented, “Comprehensive surveillance has always meant capturing everything material to business conduct. What counts as material is changing — AI-assisted conversations and image-based content are now part of daily workflows at every major financial institution.” She added that Shield plans to evolve compliance infrastructure so governance keeps pace with technology adoption.

Shield described the additions as intended to provide a single compliance path for these data types as firms increase use of generative AI tools and richer media in enterprise messaging.