Microsoft rebuilds Copilot around delegated work and AI agents

Microsoft has introduced a redesigned Copilot that brings chat, delegated tasks and coding tools into one application experience. The company says the update is intended to help people and organizations use artificial intelligence for everyday tasks and longer projects.

Three capabilities anchor the release: Home, Code and Autopilot. Home combines Chat, for quick questions, with Cowork, for tasks users delegate. Word, Excel and PowerPoint also work within the interface. Copilot in these documents draws on Fabric IQ, which Microsoft says uses more than 20 million semantic models built in Power BI. Changes by colleagues or the assistant appear in real time. A new plugin registry is due to start this month, giving organizations one catalog for Microsoft, partner and custom plugins.

Code lets users describe an app, tracker or dashboard in plain language for automatic creation. It uses technology also found in GitHub Copilot and can be hosted on a company’s own systems. Autopilot is a persistent agent designed to handle recurring, multistep work, such as supplier reviews, schedules and stakeholder follow-ups. Microsoft says it can continue working in the cloud when users are unavailable.

A related feature, Today, is due to enter private preview in October and will summarize missed messages and pending tasks across mail and chat. Microsoft’s FinOps for AI controls let administrators monitor usage, set spending limits, approve credit requests and restrict teams’ monthly AI model choices. Quick answers and first drafts use a fixed-price subscription; Code, Cowork, Autopilot and the Astra and Fable frontier models use usage-based billing.

Home and Code are expected through Microsoft’s Frontier program within weeks, while Autopilot is set to enter private preview by month’s end. Microsoft has not released independent data on adoption, accuracy or time savings for the three capabilities.