微软认为其新版 Copilot“超级应用”将与 Office 一样具有影响力

在上个月预告新版 Copilot“超级应用”后，微软今天正式发布了它。重新设计的 Copilot 应用将聊天、编程和 Agent 三项 AI 能力整合到单一界面中。作为发布的一部分，微软还将今年早些时候在 Build 大会上推出的 AI 个人助理 Scout 更名为 Autopilot。

新版 Copilot 应用将设有 Home、Code 和 Autopilot 三个标签页，其中 Home 将 Copilot Chat 与 Cowork 结合在一起。它是 Copilot 用户的默认入口体验；微软还计划在其中加入 Today 功能，作为个性化仪表板，汇集重要电子邮件、会议请求、Teams 讨论串等内容。

“Home 是帮助你掌握全局的地方，让你保持方向感并持续推进工作：查看最近活动，获得 Copilot 能够提供帮助的建议，并从上次中断的位置继续工作，”微软负责工作场景 AI 的首席营销官 Jared Spataro 在介绍文章中解释道。

专注于知识工作者的 Copilot 应用新增 Code，是一个令人意外的功能。 图片：微软

Code 标签页是这款所谓“超级应用”中令人意外的新增功能，通常不会让人将其与面向知识工作者设计的应用联系起来。它允许任何人创建应用、跟踪器、仪表板或自动化流程，并将结果以云托管的内部应用形式分享给同事。“Code 采用与 GitHub Copilot 相同的底层技术，在沙盒环境中运行，并且可在你的租户内安全托管，”Spataro 表示。

Autopilot 是 Copilot 体验中的新增功能，Spataro 将其称为“数字队友”。它此前名为 Scout，最初以桌面应用形式提供；Autopilot 则是其云端版本，让个人 AI 助手能够在你睡觉时继续运行。与许多其他 AI Agent 一样，Autopilot 拥有自己的云计算机实例，可被指派执行诸如监控 Teams 频道、运行周期性工作任务或处理后续跟进等工作。

与一些其他 AI Agent 相比，真正的区别在于微软将 Autopilot 打造成了企业级产品，以吸引依赖其 Office 和身份管理套件的企业。“Autopilot 位于你的租户中，拥有自己的身份、记忆、计算机和工作区，并且构建于 Microsoft IQ 之上，因此能够理解你的组织实际如何运作，”Spataro 表示。“它会出现在人们已经开展工作的地方——Teams、Outlook、聊天、频道和文档中——因此你可以像 @ 提及同事一样 @ 提及它，并获得权限、审计和治理能力的支持。”

你可以为 Autopilot 设置名称和外观。 图片：微软

对企业安全和控制的全面关注，是微软再次向企业推销 Copilot 的重要组成部分。这一次的不同在于，企业为 Copilot 支付的费用将取决于员工的实际使用方式。微软将对这款新版 Copilot 应用中的 Cowork、Code 和 Autopilot 部分采用按使用量计费，因此，任何长时间运行的 Agent 能力，或 Astra 和 Fable 等模型的使用，都将按用量收费。

常规 Copilot 许可证，即用户订阅许可证，将在 Chat 以及 Word、Excel、PowerPoint、Outlook 和 Teams 中提供 Copilot。微软正使用自动模型选择器，为每项任务匹配适合的模型；但 IT 管理员需要使用微软新的 FinOps for AI 来管理 AI 支出，并确保任何 Agent 使用不会失控。

借助这款新版 Copilot 应用，微软似乎终于为其 AI 助手确定了一套产品公式。自以 Bing 内聊天机器人形式首次推出以来，该公司已多次重新设计 Copilot；最新的三标签设计建立在上个月其两款独立的消费者和商业版 Copilot 应用合并的基础上。这是一项迟来的改变，同时还伴随着一些重要的 AI 领导层调整，最终帮助微软首次任命了统一负责 Copilot 的主管。

新的 Home 和 Code 标签页将在“未来几周”开始向微软 Frontier 计划中可提前使用 AI 功能的用户推出，而 Autopilot 将于本月晚些时候进入私密预览。Code 也将在今年晚些时候面向 Microsoft 365 Premium 和 Pro 订阅用户开放预览。

可以说，与 Claude 或 ChatGPT 相比，Copilot 在消费级市场并未取得成功；但微软的核心商业客户正在逐渐表现出兴趣。这款新版 Copilot 应用实际上并非为了与 Muse 等产品竞争，微软如今将其称为“为工作打造的 AI”。微软 CEO 萨提亚·纳德拉也将 Copilot 称为一种新的操作系统。“我们正在将 Copilot 构建为面向工作的新 OS，它覆盖每一种模型、每一种形态和每一项任务，”纳德拉在一篇 X 平台帖子中表示。

微软甚至将新版 Copilot 与 Office 对生产力的影响相提并论。“正如 Office 定义了 PC 时代的工作，新版 Copilot 旨在定义 AI 时代的工作，”Spataro 表示。

这很可能是微软的目标，但 AI 时代的竞争远比 PC 时代激烈。微软显然已落后于 Google、OpenAI、Anthropic，以及如今的 Meta；“为工作打造的 AI”是否足以帮助其追赶，仍值得关注。

更新，9 月 25 日：本文已补充微软 CEO 萨提亚·纳德拉的评论。

After teasing its new Copilot “super app” last month, Microsoft is officially unveiling it today. The redesigned Copilot app bundles three AI capabilities into a single interface of chat, coding, and agents. As part of the launch, Microsoft is also rebranding Scout, the AI personal assistant it unveiled at Build earlier this year, as Autopilot.

This new Copilot app will have three tabs for Home, Code, and Autopilot, with Home combining Copilot Chat and Cowork together. It’s the default landing experience for Copilot users, and Microsoft is also planning to include a Today feature inside it that works as a personalized dashboard for important emails, meeting requests, Teams threads, and more.

“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,” explains Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of AI at work at Microsoft.

Code is a surprise addition to a Copilot app focused on knowledge workers. Image: Microsoft

The Code tab is the surprise addition to this so-called “super app,” and not one you’d typically associate with an app designed for knowledge workers. It will let anyone create an app, tracker, dashboard, or automation and share the results with colleagues as cloud-hosted internal apps. “Powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, Code runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within your tenant,” says Spataro.

Autopilot is a new addition to the Copilot experience, and one that Spataro describes as a “digital teammate.” Previously called Scout and available initially as a desktop app, Autopilot is the cloud equivalent that enables a personal AI assistant to keep running while you’re asleep. Like many other AI agents, Autopilot has its own cloud computer instance that can be tasked to do things like watch Teams channels, run recurring work tasks, or handle follow-ups.

The real difference against some other AI agents is that Microsoft has made Autopilot enterprise grade, appealing to businesses that rely on its Office and identity management suites. “Autopilot 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,” says Spataro. “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.”

You can give Autopilot a name and an appearance. Image: Microsoft

All of this focus on enterprise security and control is a big part of Microsoft trying to sell businesses on Copilot once again. The difference this time around is that how much a business pays for Copilot will depend on what their employees are doing. Microsoft is using usage-based billing for the Cowork, Code, and Autopilot parts of this new Copilot app, so any long-running agentic capabilities or usage of models like Astra and Fable will be billed based on usage.

The regular Copilot license, known as a user subscription license, will give you Copilot in Chat, and in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Microsoft is using an auto model picker to match the model for each task, but IT admins will need to use Microsoft’s new FinOps for AI to manage AI spend and ensure any agentic usage doesn’t get out of control.

With this new Copilot app it feels like Microsoft has finally settled on a formula for its AI assistant. The company has redesigned Copilot plenty of times since its introduction as a chatbot inside Bing, and this latest three-tab design builds on the combination of its two separate consumer and commercial Copilot apps last month. That’s a long-overdue change, alongside some big AI leadership shapeups that helped finally appoint a single Copilot boss for the first time.

The new Home and Code tabs will start rolling out to Microsoft’s Frontier program for early access AI features “in the coming weeks,” and Autopilot will go into private preview later this month. Code will also be in preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year.

It’s fair to say that Copilot has failed in the consumer space compared to Claude or ChatGPT, but Microsoft’s core commercial customers are slowly showing interest. This new Copilot app isn’t really designed to compete with things like Muse, and Microsoft is now calling it “the AI built for work.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also calls Copilot a new operating system. “We’re building Copilot as a new OS for work that spans every model, every form factor, and every task,” says Nadella in a post on X.

Microsoft is even comparing its new Copilot to how influential Office was on productivity. “Just as Office defined work for the PC era, the new Copilot is built to define it for the AI era,” says Spataro.

That might well be Microsoft’s goal, but there’s a lot more competition in this AI era than there ever was in the PC era. Microsoft has certainly fallen behind the likes of Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and now Meta, and it’ll be interesting to see if “the AI built for work” is enough to help it catch up.

Update, September 25th : Article updated with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments.

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