Microsoft Consolidates Copilot Into AI 'Super App' and Shifts to Metered Billing for Background Agents

Microsoft has launched a redesigned Copilot application that consolidates its chat, coding, and autonomous agent capabilities into three primary tabs: Home, Code, and Autopilot. The new Code tab operates in a sandboxed environment, allowing non-developers to build cloud-hosted trackers and dashboards using GitHub Copilot technology. The company's previously announced Scout desktop assistant has been rebranded to Autopilot and transitioned to a persistent cloud instance capable of running recurring tasks while users are offline. Microsoft is shifting to usage-based billing for advanced features, meaning long-running agent tasks utilizing models like Astra or Fable will generate variable compute costs for enterprise customers. To prevent massive cost overruns, IT administrators will use a new "FinOps for AI" dashboard to govern and cap automated agent spend across their organizations. "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." — Jared Spataro