Microsoft pushes agentic AI with Copilot Cowork

Copilot Cowork lets users delegate tasks, running workflows across Microsoft 365 applications like Outlook, Teams, and Excel. Users describe the desired outcome, and Cowork uses data from emails, meetings, files, and other sources to create a plan and execute it, providing checkpoints for user review. It can handle tasks such as calendar management, meeting preparation, and company research, saving users time and effort. For example, Cowork can review a user's Outlook calendar, identify conflicts, and propose changes, or it can gather relevant inputs from emails, meetings, and files to prepare briefing documents and presentations for customer meetings. Copilot Cowork is built in collaboration with Anthropic and uses Claude's reasoning model. While Anthropic also has Claude Cowork, Microsoft's version runs in the cloud within a Microsoft 365 tenant, offering enterprise data protection. Microsoft is positioning this cloud-based approach as an advantage for enterprise users. Microsoft also announced the Microsoft 365 E7 plan for $99/user/month, which includes Copilot, Agent 365, and Entra Suite. Agent 365 is a new tool for IT to govern, manage, and secure AI agents across the organization. Copilot Cowork is currently in Research Preview, with broader access coming via the Frontier program in late March.