(Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Microsoft has moved quickly to roll out new Copilot upgrades, from simple features that come free with Windows to more advanced tools included with a M365 Copilot license. However, all the changes have left me a little confused, so I talked with Microsoft executives at the company's recent Ignite conference to get a feel for which Copilot and AI features are coming at each level. Here's a guide to what you can expect over the next few months.
All Windows Users
Navjot Virk, Corporate VP for Windows Experiences, said that her teams are focused on making sure "AI is accessible for everybody" and easy to use.
Microsoft is evolving Windows into a "canvas on which we use AI and agents, and part of that is bringing them into your flow," she said. Microsoft also wants 365 Copilot to be highly contextual, so it helps you with what you're working on at the moment. Of course, the company is pushing Copilot+ PCs, which come with a neural processing unit (NPU) for even better AI capabilities.
In October, Microsoft announced deeper integration of Copilot into Windows. Some of this is obvious, like putting an "Ask Copilot" icon on the Windows taskbar (largely replacing the old search button). Virk said this facilitates much quicker searches for files, apps, and settings—from the button or via chat and voice.
Microsoft has several ways to access Copilot even if you don't have a license. It shows up in the Edge browser, or you can go to copilot.microsoft.com. When you run Copilot without a Microsoft 365 license, it uses web data and your prompts, which Microsoft sometimes calls "Copilot Free."
Consumer Microsoft 365 Users
With a Personal, Family, or Premium Microsoft 365 plan, Copilot can do things like help draft or summarize documents or analyze data in Excel. The Personal version gives you a limited number of AI credits, while the Premium version includes "extensive usage."
M365 Premium also comes with more agents, including Researcher and the upcoming Analyst, with a limit of 25 tasks per month.
"We've made agents as easy to use as apps," Virk said. You can launch an agent from the Copilot icon on the taskbar, where it will indicate if it is done or needs help.
Microsoft is also bringing M365 Copilot into File Explorer, the Notifications Center, the Edge browser, and elsewhere. In File Explorer, you can ask questions about a document. In your calendar, the agent can show you all the emails related to that meeting.
Copilot+ PC Extras
Copilot + PCs feature things like semantic search, so you can find things even if you don't remember the exact name. This is now federated, so it works on both your local data (using the local NPU) and SharePoint (which is in the cloud).
Copilot+ PCs also have features like Click To Do, and that is getting new features such as one that can turn PDF tables into Excel tables. And it has the older Copilot+ tools, such as Windows Studio effects in videos, live translation in captions, Cocreator in Paint, and the Recall feature.
M365 Business Users
Microsoft 365 business users are all getting the basic features that are now part of the consumer M365 users and a good deal more.
All M365 customers have access to "Copilot Chat," which gives you AI answers grounded in web data, as well as image generation and the ability to set up shareable Copilot Pages. A big difference between this and consumer chatbots is that the information has enterprise data protection and is covered by your organization's contract with Microsoft. As with most M365 features, IT administrators can enable or disable access to these features depending on roles.
By spring, Microsoft says that Copilot Chat will be adding features that used to require a special license. Within Outlook, Copilot Chat will understand a user's entire inbox and calendar, instead of only individual email threads, so you should be able to better manage your inbox, and schedule and prepare for upcoming meetings.
Plus, "agent mode" in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will let you work interactively with Copilot to create and refine content in these applications. Agent Mode in Copilot Chat will use web data and the files you specifically reference. In other words, it can work against the document you are working on but doesn't pull things from larger corporate information.
M365 Copilot Licenses
Finally, Microsoft offers the M365 Copilot, which adds a lot of features on top of those basic features. When you open Copilot Chat, you get two choices: web data or work data.
As Virk explains it, "the biggest difference of Microsoft 365 Copilot is that it comes with Work IQ," which has your work context built into it. Announced at Ignite, Work IQ combines the corporate data called the Microsoft Graph, plus memory and inference so it can personalize results and automate tasks. Virk showed an example of asking when her performance review was due. The agent understands company policies, and can pull in data from her calendar, email, or Teams.
It's a "transformative technology," Virk said. "It's like the early days of the internet and the value of this comes when everybody is able to adopt. It's about democratizing AI and we want everyone to have access to it."
Windows 365 for Agents
Microsoft made a number of specific announcements for other uses. One is Windows 365 for agents that need to use their own operating system, specific applications, or browser.
Stefan Kinnestrand, VP of Cloud Endpoints Product Marketing, noted that Microsoft's Researcher Agent and its Copilot Studio's computer-use agent both use this feature. Some third-party agents, such as those from Manus AI, also use this for computer use.
The other big announcement in this area is Cloud Apps, where instead of streaming a whole desktop, you are just streaming a single application to any device anywhere. Kinnestrand noted that it preserves your app settings and state between sessions. Virtual PCs and applications are particularly popular in financial services, health care, retail, and government apps, he said.
Security Agents
On the security front, "you could think of [agents] like an assistant for someone in an IT shop," doing tasks like security operations, managing devices, or managing identity, said Alex Simons, Corporate VP of Product Management and Identity Security.
He pointed to a threat triage agent from Defender that helps security analysts speed through a list of all the things that might be problematic.
For securing AI, the big new platform is Agent 365 with lots of new identity capabilities for agents as well as basic tools to manage, secure, and govern agents, from Microsoft or other providers, including your own agents. Simons agreed that there are lot of other companies also working in this space, which he said is the nature of the industry. Microsoft is trying to make sure it has the right APIs, whether a customer chose Microsoft tools or those from a competitor.
Simons compared Agent 365 to Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite, which combines Intune and Entra ID to manage devices. It does the same thing for agents.
It's important for Microsoft to be able to have a platform that works with agents from multiple companies, he said. Agents from ServiceNow, Workday, and SAP are all integrating the agent platform into their products, while other third parties or corporate developers can use the Agent SDK to add support easily. Simons said these tools are all in public preview, and should be generally available in the next few months.