Short answer: the questions your team asks every week ("what's the payment term for this vendor?", "which form do I use for a site visit claim?", "what did we agree with this supplier on returns?") can now be answered by AI from your own files, with a link to the document it used. ChatGPT, Microsoft SharePoint and Google's Gemini Notebook all do this today. The tools are ready. In many companies, the documents aren't.
The quiet cost of asking the one person who knows
Every business has one or two people who know where everything is. New joiners ask them. Vendors call them. Sales asks them what the warranty covers. Each question takes two minutes, but the interruptions add up, and when that person is on leave, work slows down or someone guesses.
Many of the answers already exist somewhere: a policy PDF, an SOP in a shared drive, a vendor agreement, last year's onboarding deck. The problem is finding the right paragraph quickly. That's the part AI now does well, as long as it's reading the right files.
Three tools that do this now
ChatGPT Company Knowledge. OpenAI's help page describes it as a plugin that answers organisation-specific questions using the sources available to you, including connected apps. It's available on ChatGPT Business, Enterprise and Edu. OpenAI says it respects permissions in the connected source, so a member can only retrieve what they're already allowed to access, and it tells users to review the answer and any source links before relying on it.
Agents in SharePoint. If your files live in Microsoft 365, Microsoft's support page says you can chat with an agent about a site's pages and files. You need a Microsoft Copilot license, or your organisation needs pay-as-you-go billing for agents in SharePoint turned on. It works with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF and text files, among others. Microsoft notes that agents only answer from files you already have access to and that are included as the agent's sources, so answers can sometimes be limited. The same page says upgrades to these agents are coming in mid-November 2026.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM). Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026. You upload sources into a notebook and ask questions. Google's FAQ says it answers based on the information in your uploaded sources, and if the answer isn't in the source material, it won't provide a response. Each source can be up to 500,000 words, or up to 200MB for a file you upload. The plans page lists 50 sources per notebook on the free Standard tier and more on paid plans.
Pick the one that sits where your files already are
Don't move your documents to suit a tool. If the company runs on Google Drive, start with Gemini Notebook. If it runs on SharePoint and you already pay for Copilot, use the SharePoint agent. If the team already lives in ChatGPT Business, connect your drives to Company Knowledge.
Moving everything into a new system first is an easy place for these projects to stall. Starting where the files already sit means the first useful answer can come in a day.
Where it goes wrong
The AI is only as good as the folder it reads. Three problems to watch for.
Old versions. If the drive has "Leave policy 2023.pdf" and "Leave policy FINAL v2.pdf", the AI may quote the wrong one, with a confident citation. Before you connect a folder, remove or archive anything that's out of date.
Loose permissions. Both OpenAI and Microsoft say their tools follow the permissions you already have. That protects you only if those permissions are right. If the salary sheet sits in a folder everyone can open, an AI that can find things quickly makes that mistake easier to stumble on. Check who can see what before switching anything on.
Answers nobody checks. OpenAI's own instruction is to review the source links before relying on an answer. Build that habit from day one: an answer without a source isn't an answer. For anything involving money, contracts or a customer promise, the person still opens the cited document.
A one-week start
- List the 20 questions your team or vendors ask most. Ask the person everyone goes to; they'll know in five minutes.
- Find the document that answers each one. If no document answers it, write one first. AI can't quote what was never written down.
- Clean one folder. Put only current, approved files in it. Check its sharing settings.
- Connect that folder to whichever tool matches where it lives, and ask it the 20 questions.
- Score the answers. Right with the right source, right with the wrong source, or wrong. Fix the documents behind the misses and ask again.
Vendors usually don't get access to the tool itself. The win is that whoever answers the vendor's call can find the answer in seconds, with the clause to quote.
Once one folder works, add the next. If you want help mapping which of your operations questions are worth automating first, our page on business operations automation shows how we approach it.
Arthat AI
Working on something similar at your company?
Arthat AI builds these automations for Indian businesses every week. If you want to talk through whether this fits your situation, we'll give you a straight answer — even if the answer is "don't build it."
