The new Copilot: Home, Code, Autopilot and what’s changing

Chat and Cowork are coming together in a new Home experience, Code can build simple apps from plain English, and an always-on Autopilot agent is on the way. Some changes sit within the existing Copilot licence. Others introduce pay-as-you-go Copilot Credits.

Microsoft has announced another sizeable update to Copilot. And this one changes more than where a button lives.

Over the next few months, the Copilot app starts bringing together quick AI assistance, longer-running work, app creation and agents in one place. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are moving into the experience too.

If you’re already using Copilot, some of it will feel familiar. Some of it won’t.

Here are the changes worth knowing about.

From October, organisations using Microsoft’s Frontier programme will start seeing a redesigned Home screen in the Copilot app. Chat and Cowork sit together here, with users able to move between them from the same prompt area.

Chat is the place for the quick stuff. Ask a question. Find something. Draft something.

Cowork is for work you want to hand over. Give it an outcome and it can work through the task, potentially across several steps, before returning something finished.

Think customer briefing. Launch kit. Bid response.

Less: “Can you help me with this?”

More: “Take this away and come back when it’s done.”

Microsoft says the longer-term direction is even simpler. Eventually, users shouldn’t need to decide whether Chat, Cowork or Code is the right place to start. Describe what you need and Copilot will route the work itself.

That might sound like a small interface decision. It points towards something bigger.

The user starts thinking about the work. Copilot works out which capability needs to do it.

Then there’s Code. Despite the name, you don’t need to arrive clutching a programming manual.

You describe what you want in plain English and Copilot can build things such as apps, trackers, dashboards, automations and workflows. Small tools might stay on your desktop. Others can become cloud-hosted apps shared with your team.

Microsoft’s argument is interesting: creating a small app could become as normal a part of work as creating a document or spreadsheet. That changes the starting point.

Today, someone might think: We really need a better way to track this. Then open Excel.

Tomorrow, they might describe the problem and ask Copilot to build something around it.

That doesn’t suddenly make everyone a software developer. But it could make the gap between “this process is annoying” and “I’ve made something that helps” considerably smaller.

Code begins with Frontier users from late September before a wider rollout. It requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and uses pay-as-you-go Copilot Credits.

This is probably the change most likely to generate questions.

Autopilot is an always-on personal agent that works on your behalf without waiting for a new prompt each time. It has its own identity, memory, computer and workspace inside Microsoft 365.

You give it a name, a role and a goal. Then it gets on with the job.

Microsoft’s example is a supplier review. Autopilot could create the plan, organise preparation, support meetings, follow up afterwards and chase people for updates.

Because it runs in the cloud, the work can continue while you’re doing something else. It can also appear across Teams, Outlook, chats, channels and documents, and you can @mention it in much the same way you might involve a colleague.

If you’ve read our thoughts on agents before, this question will sound familiar: What job are you actually giving it?

An always-on agent makes the instructions, access, boundaries and escalation route even more important.

Autopilot is only in private preview for now, so most organisations won’t suddenly find one waiting at its desk tomorrow morning.

And yes, Microsoft already has something called Windows Autopilot.

Same name. Entirely different thing.

Because apparently naming things was the easy part.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint are also becoming much more deeply integrated into the Copilot app.

Frontier users will be able to create, edit and collaborate on real Office files alongside their Copilot conversation. Ask for a brief, budget model or presentation and you can work on the resulting file without constantly moving between apps.

There’s also a new Library for recent Office files. This might prove more significant than it initially sounds.

AI work currently involves a fair amount of hopping around.

Ask Copilot something. Open the file. Make a change. Go back. Find another document. Repeat.

Bringing more of that work into one place could make the experience feel much less like using AI alongside Office and much more like working inside one joined-up environment.

There’s a fairly important commercial change sitting underneath all of this. Microsoft is separating what it calls everyday AI from advanced AI.

Everyday Copilot use remains covered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. That includes familiar experiences such as Copilot Chat and Copilot across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.

Longer running and more complex work uses Copilot Credits on top of the licence.

That includes capabilities such as Cowork, Code, Autopilot, advanced SharePoint features and some of Microsoft’s most capable AI models. Credits are pay-as-you-go.

There’s some reassurance for organisations here.

Those pay-as-you-go capabilities remain switched off until an administrator creates a spending policy. Nothing starts quietly running up a bill in the background. Users may still see the features, but without the right policy they can be asked to request access instead.

For technology teams, this makes cost management part of the rollout conversation.

• Who gets access?
• What budget do they have?
• Which use cases justify credits?
• And how will you know whether the additional spend is producing something worthwhile?

Suddenly, “Can people use the feature?” and “Should we pay for this use of the feature?” sit rather close together.

Microsoft has also announced several supporting changes.

Copilot Notebooks are getting task delegation, Office editing, interactive reports and model selection. Copilot in SharePoint and OneDrive is becoming generally available, with new multi-step capabilities, and work at a larger scale, using Copilot Credits.

Work IQ is also expanding to include information from Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Power Platform, where organisations connect those systems. That gives Copilot more context from business applications as well as emails, meetings, chats and files.

And two preview capabilities are worth watching.

• Today is designed to pull together what needs your attention across email, calendar, Teams, meetings and tasks.
• Meanwhile, @mentioning Copilot in a Teams conversation will allow it to work from the shared context of that conversation, rather than only an individual user’s information.

There’s a lot here. Which is precisely why organisations probably don’t need to chase all of it.

The first step is working out what’ll actually reach your organisation.

Many of these capabilities will arrive through Frontier, Microsoft’s early-access programme. Others are still in private or public preview. Rollout starts from late September and continues through to November.

Once you know what’s coming, look at the work.

Where could longer-running AI genuinely help? Which processes might benefit from a small app? What would you trust an always-on agent to handle, and where would you still want a person involved?

Copilot Credits add another consideration.

If some uses carry a variable cost, which ones are valuable enough to justify it? Those are the conversations worth having now.

The interface will keep changing.

The bigger question is what you want Copilot to do once those new capabilities arrive.