Microsoft overhauls Copilot: 3 big changes coming to the AI app

Microsoft has unveiled a major overhaul of Copilot, bringing AI chat, Microsoft Office, coding tools and autonomous AI agents together in a single app.

The company is positioning the redesigned Copilot as a central place for users to work with AI rather than requiring them to move between separate applications and services.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously described the project as a Copilot "super app" spanning consumer and business experiences.

The revamped app centres on three main areas: Home, Code, and Autopilot.

Home combines Microsoft's AI chat experience with Copilot Cowork and Office.

Users can work with Word, Excel and PowerPoint directly within Copilot, allowing them to create and edit documents without repeatedly switching between separate applications.

Microsoft says Home is designed to become the starting point for work, bringing together conversations, files, applications and AI assistance.

The second major addition is Code.

Powered by technology underlying GitHub Copilot, it is designed to let more people build applications and other software using natural-language instructions.

That means users who are not professional developers can describe what they want to create and have AI help build it.

Potentially the biggest change is Autopilot, Microsoft's new persistent AI agent.

Unlike a conventional chatbot that waits for a user to ask a question, Autopilot is designed to continue working on assigned tasks in the background.

Microsoft describes it as a proactive and personal agent that can keep working even when the user is not actively interacting with Copilot.

It can be given recurring or longer-running tasks and operate using an organisation's applications and information.

Microsoft is giving Autopilot its own digital identity within a company's systems, allowing businesses to manage what information and applications it can access.

Administrators can also audit its activity and apply security and data-protection controls.

The overhaul represents Microsoft's attempt to simplify an increasingly complicated collection of Copilot-branded products.

Nadella said earlier this year that Microsoft would bring its Copilot experiences, including coding, into one "super app".

The company is now delivering on that plan.

Microsoft says Copilot usage has been increasing sharply. Conversations per user have nearly doubled year on year, while average weekly engagement is now comparable to Outlook and Teams.

The number of customers deploying Copilot to more than 50,000 employees has increased more than sevenfold year on year, Microsoft says.

The company is also opening Copilot to AI models from different providers rather than relying exclusively on OpenAI technology.

Microsoft says its platform can use models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, allowing customers to choose different AI systems for different jobs.

The strategy puts the revamped Copilot into increasingly direct competition with AI platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are similarly expanding beyond chatbots into coding, productivity tools and autonomous agents.

For Microsoft, however, the key advantage is its existing position inside workplaces through Windows, Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel and other business software.

The new Copilot is designed to bring those tools — and increasingly the work performed inside them — under one AI interface.