Microsoft Copilot Just Got a Massive Upgrade

Summary
Kevin Stratvert presents an inside look at Microsoft’s redesigned Copilot after visiting Microsoft headquarters and speaking with team members Jacob Andreou and Freada Sylvester. The overhaul consolidates chat, autonomous agents (“Autopilot”), interactive app-building (“Code”), and full in-app Office editing into a single unified interface.

What is shown

• Home Composer [00:41]: A universal text prompt box (“What can I move forward?”) that automatically routes queries to chat, background workflows, or app generation.
• Autopilot & Agent “Fern” [01:16]: Setup of an always-on background AI teammate named Fern, configuring starter routines (Morning brief, Watch important changes, Suggest replies) and scheduling recurring tasks.
• Teams & Outlook Integration [02:16]: An Autopilot agent (@Fern) scoped inside a Microsoft Teams channel drafts a Project Decision Brief document from discussion threads and schedules a 30-minute meeting in Outlook.
• Code Workspace [03:33]: A no-code app creation workspace where a user prompt generates a functional, interactive desktop order-tracking widget (“Full queue”) linked to backend data.
• Embedded Office Suite [05:08]: Full PowerPoint and Word interfaces running directly inside the Copilot canvas, retaining the ribbon, co-authoring tools, and document editing without opening standalone apps.

Claims & numbers

• The presenter notes that Office app integration in the new Copilot starts with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint [06:39].
• Freada Sylvester states that Autopilot routines are tied into Work IQ and contextually scoped to specific channel permissions when added to Teams [01:52, 02:51].
• Jacob Andreou claims hosting and sharing tools built in the Code tab operates with the same sharing flow as OneDrive Word documents [04:46].

Notable quotes

• [00:00] Jacob Andreou: “And you should never be able to use it wrong. No matter what you need, you can start with this box and the right thing will happen.”
• [00:12] Freada Sylvester: “We want to bring the full fidelity of Office into the Copilot app.”
• [06:58] Jacob Andreou: “The right to exist and kind of the core reason for Copilot... is to help people get things done.”

Assessment
This is a hands-on preview and interview showcasing pre-release features of Microsoft Copilot at Microsoft’s offices. The demonstrations show functioning UI interactions and live software flows, though some background agent actions (such as calendar scheduling and document generation) are fast-forwarded to demonstrate completed outputs.

Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-10-09 from the video’s audio and frames.