Microsoft’s new Copilot app adds coding and an always-on Autopilot agent

Microsoft has launched a new version of its Copilot app that puts AI chat, coding and long-running agents in one place for work. Jared Spataro, its chief marketing officer for AI at Work, announced it in a blog post on Friday.

Chief executive Satya Nadella first promised a Copilot super app at the Build conference in June, GeekWire’s Todd Bishop reported. Executives showed the app to corporate customers at an event on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg and CNBC.

“We’re building Copilot as a new OS for work that spans every model, every form factor, and every task,” Nadella wrote on X.

Home, Code and Autopilot

The app now has three sections. Home brings together Chat and Cowork, Microsoft’s agent that takes a task and runs it to the end. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are also built into the app, so Copilot can create and edit real files that colleagues work on at the same time.

Code lets people build apps, trackers, dashboards and automations by describing them in plain language. It uses the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot. The code runs in a sandbox and can be hosted inside a company’s own Microsoft 365 tenant.

“Learning to build them is becoming as basic a skill as writing a memo or modeling a budget,” Spataro wrote.

Autopilot, previously called Scout, is an always-on agent. Users give it a name, a role and a goal. It runs in the cloud with its own identity, memory and workspace, and keeps working when its user is away. People can mention it in Teams and Outlook like a colleague.

Autopilot grew out of Microsoft’s experiments with OpenClaw, the open-source personal agent, GeekWire reported.

“The hallmark of an amazing, long-running agent is autonomy and flexibility. That is the same thing that makes them absolutely terrifying to an IT admin,” Jacob Andreou, the executive vice president who leads Copilot, said at the event, according to GeekWire.

Two ways to pay

A per-user licence covers everyday use, such as Chat and Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Cowork, Code and Autopilot are billed by usage. So are the newest frontier models, such as Astra and Fable, Microsoft said.

Home and Code will roll out to Microsoft’s Frontier early-access programme in the coming weeks. Autopilot moves to private preview at the end of September. Code will reach Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers in preview later this year.

Playing catch-up

Until now, Microsoft sold its 365 Copilot assistant separately from its GitHub Copilot coding agent, CNBC reported. Fewer than 7% of its more than 450 million commercial Office 365 seats have licences for the AI add-on, according to CNBC. Andreou acknowledged to CNBC that adding coding to the app was Microsoft catching up.

OpenAI and Anthropic have been bundling chat, coding and agents in their own apps. Anthropic folded Cowork into Claude last week. The new Copilot lets users choose between OpenAI and Anthropic models, or an Auto mode that picks one for each request, GeekWire reported.

The app also absorbs Microsoft’s separate consumer Copilot, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft had already retired its Mico mascot in August, after Nadella put Andreou in charge of the product.

“We’re not going to build a Copilot that’s like your personal companion,” Charles Lamanna, who oversees teams working on Copilot’s core workplace features, told Bloomberg.

Andreou and Lamanna told Bloomberg that the success of Meta’s Muse showed people were open to AI automation. Microsoft plans to share more at its Ignite conference in San Francisco, from 17 to 20 November.