Microsoft Expands Copilot With Task Execution Feature

Microsoft introduced Copilot Cowork on Monday (March 30), a new feature that allows its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to carry out tasks across Microsoft 365 applications.

According to the company’s announcement, the update is being made available to a limited group of customers through its Frontier program, which gives early access to new AI tools.

Copilot Cowork is designed to handle work that takes more than a single prompt. Instead of asking the assistant for one answer at a time, users can assign a task and have Copilot complete it across apps like Outlook, Teams and Excel. The system can gather information from emails, documents and chats, organize it and produce a finished output.

Microsoft said the feature is meant to help users manage ongoing work by keeping track of context across tasks. It allows Copilot to continue working on assignments over time, rather than treating each request as a separate interaction.

Alongside Cowork, Microsoft introduced updates that allow Copilot to use more than one AI model when generating responses. With “Critique,” the program can produce an answer using one model and then review it using another before showing it to the user.

The goal is to improve accuracy and reduce errors by adding a second layer of review. Microsoft also introduced a feature called “Council,” which lets users compare responses from different models side by side.

These additions are intended to give users more visibility into how answers are generated and to provide a way to check results before using them.

The Copilot Cowork feature is currently limited to customers in Microsoft’s Frontier program. This program allows select users to test new AI tools and provide feedback before they are released more widely.

Microsoft said it plans to expand access based on user feedback and testing results. The company has been steadily adding new features to Copilot as it looks to increase usage of its AI tools across its workplace software. The release follows Anthropic’s introduction of its own “Cowork” capability, which allows its Claude AI system to act as a collaborator across tasks, as PYMNTS reported in January.

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