Microsoft is launching a new version of its Copilot app today, bundling AI chat, coding tools, and a digital assistant named Autopilot into one interface. The company calls it a “super app,” and it wants you to believe it will reshape work the way Office did for PCs.
Three Tabs, One App
The new Copilot has three tabs: Home, Code, and Autopilot. Home combines Copilot Chat with a feature called Cowork, and it acts as a personalized dashboard for emails, meeting requests, and Teams conversations. Microsoft is adding a Today feature inside Home that surfaces important items.
“Home is where you get your bearings, keeping you grounded and moving forward: review recent activity, get suggestions on what Copilot can help with, and pick up work right where you left off,” says Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of AI at work at Microsoft.
Coding Inside Copilot
The Code tab is the surprise. It lets anyone build apps, trackers, dashboards, or automations, then share them with colleagues as cloud-hosted internal apps. The code runs in a sandboxed environment, and Microsoft says it is powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot.
“Code runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within your tenant.”
Autopilot Takes Over
Autopilot was previously called Scout, the AI personal assistant Microsoft unveiled at Build earlier this year. Now it is the cloud version, and it runs continuously in the background. It watches Teams channels, handles recurring tasks, and follows up on work.
“It lives in your tenant with its own identity, memory, computer, and workspace, and it’s built on Microsoft IQ so it understands how your organization actually works,” Spataro says. “It shows up where people already work — Teams, Outlook, chats, channels, and documents — so you can @mention it like a colleague, with permissions, audit, and governance behind it.”
Pricing Depends on Use
Microsoft is using usage-based billing for Cowork, Code, and Autopilot. Long-running agentic capabilities or use of models like Astra and Fable will be charged based on actual consumption. The regular Copilot license, known as a user subscription license, covers Copilot in Chat plus Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.
IT admins will need to use Microsoft’s new FinOps for AI to manage spending and cap agentic usage.
Early Access Rollout
The new Home and Code tabs start rolling out to Microsoft’s Frontier program for early access AI features “in the coming weeks.” Autopilot goes into private preview later this month. Code will also be in preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year.
The Office Comparison
Microsoft is making a big claim. Spataro says the new Copilot is built to define work for the AI era the way Office defined it for the PC era.
“Just as Office defined work for the PC era, the new Copilot is built to define it for the AI era,” he says.
Catching Up to the Field
There is a problem with that comparison. Microsoft has fallen behind Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and now Meta in this era. The consumer market has not treated Copilot well — the story notes it has failed there compared to Claude or ChatGPT.
Microsoft’s core commercial customers are showing slow interest, but the new Copilot is not really designed to compete with consumer-facing assistants like Muse. It is now called “the AI built for work.”
What This Means for You
The new app is aimed at businesses that want enterprise-grade security and control over their AI assistant. The usage-based billing model means cost depends on what employees actually do, which could appeal to large organizations managing budgets across thousands of users.
Whether it catches up to the field remains to be seen. Microsoft has spent years redesigning Copilot since it first appeared as a chatbot inside Bing, and this three-tab design finally settles on a formula. Whether that formula is enough to rival Office’s influence is the question the company is betting on.
Key Facts Box
- Launch: Today
- Tabs: Home, Code, Autopilot
- Billing: Usage-based for Cowork, Code, Autopilot
- Early access: Frontier program, “coming weeks”
- Autopilot preview: Private preview, “later this month”
- Code preview: Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro, “later this year”
The story is about ambition, and the ambition is large. Whether the execution matches it is a question that will only answer itself over time.
Source material: “Microsoft thinks its new Copilot ‘super app’ will be as influential as Office,” The Verge.
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