A familiar AI companion is disappearing, while saved files take a new route and professional users receive a different research tool.<\/p>\n
Microsoft is preparing to merge its consumer Copilot app with the business-focused Microsoft 365 Copilot solution. The company aims to make artificial intelligence easier to use for people who rely on it for both personal and work-related tasks.<\/p>\n
Previously, Copilot was available across several separate products, which could make it difficult to navigate between different features and use cases. Microsoft is now moving toward a more unified model, acknowledging that the line between users\u2019 professional and personal tasks is often blurred.<\/p>\n
Which Copilot features will be discontinued<\/p>\n
By August 18, 2026, consumers will lose access to several features that Microsoft has decided to remove from Copilot. These include Group Chats, AI-powered podcast creation, experimental Copilot Labs tools, and the Deep Research feature.<\/p>\n
For paid professional users, Deep Research will be replaced by a tool called Researcher. It is intended to serve as an alternative for more complex tasks involving research, analysis, and information preparation.<\/p>\n
Microsoft removes the Mico character and moves files<\/p>\n
Along with some experimental capabilities, the company is discontinuing the animated Mico character. This floating figure resembled a modern AI version of Clippy, but it will no longer be used in Copilot.<\/p>\n
Microsoft warned that some tools may be temporarily unavailable during the transition to the unified service. Files that users stored in the previous standalone Copilot app will be moved to OneDrive.<\/p>\n
Why the company is revising its Copilot strategy<\/p>\n
Copilot\u2019s consolidation comes at a time when major AI developers are also combining their services and eliminating overlap between products. Anthropic has integrated Cowork into Chat, OpenAI has merged its Operator agent feature with ChatGPT, and Google is developing Gemini with specialized tools.<\/p>\n
In an internal memo, Jacob Andreou emphasized that Copilot must prove its usefulness in customers\u2019 everyday lives. To achieve this, Microsoft is willing to discontinue features that have not become sufficiently popular and focus on tools with practical applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A familiar AI companion is disappearing, while saved files take a new route and professional users receive a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1998,420,7853,416,68555,320,8172,7852,68554,66,33867,534],"class_list":["post-138904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-ai-tools","tag-azure","tag-azure-copilot","tag-copilot","tag-copilot-features","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365-copilot","tag-microsoft-copilot","tag-microsoft-copilot-microsoft-365-copilot-copilot-features-ai-tools-onedrive-researcher","tag-news","tag-onedrive","tag-researcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}