Microsoft overhauls Copilot with natural-language coding and autonomous AI agents

Microsoft overhauls Copilot with natural-language coding and autonomous AI agents Microsoft's massive overhaul of Copilot shifts it from a standard chat assistant into an action-oriented "super app" and business operating system. The app is now split into distinct tabs. Home combines traditional chat and delegated work (Cowork) with native Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) embedded directly into the experience. The unified workspace, combines standard conversational AI chat with Cowork, a workspace meant for delegating multi-step tasks. Directly integrates the full functionality of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into Copilot. Users can generate, edit, and collaborate on real documents, spreadsheets, and presentations live without switching apps or dealing with broken formatting. Grounded via Microsoft IQ and Fabric IQ, pulling data dynamically from sources like Power BI semantic models, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform to provide relevant, secure context instantly. Powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, the new Code tab allows users—ranging from citizen developers to professional engineers to build custom applications, dashboards, and automated workflows using plain-language descriptions. Operates inside a secure, sandboxed environment managed within the enterprise tenant, ensuring that applications and code run safely with full IT oversight and data governance. Introduces customizable, proactive Autopilot agents that operate independently with their own memory, digital identity, and dedicated Outlook/Teams presence managed by IT. Designed to keep working on delegated background tasks even when the user is offline or engaged in other work. Moving away from a strict flat-rate model for every advanced feature, Microsoft is introducing a "per-seat-plus-consumption" usage-based billing framework for heavy agentic workloads, code generation, and advanced capabilities like Cowork and Autopilot, while keeping baseline chat and office functionalities tied to traditional user subscription licenses. The updated experience is rolling out starting with Microsoft's Frontier program participants and select preview tracks, with broader enterprise availability expanding through the coming months.