Microsoft’s ambitions over the past few years to build an AI assistant that can compete with the likes of ChatGPT and Claude have been a bit of a roller coaster. Now it’s hoping that all those ups and downs have finally paid off.

The company announced the launch of an updated version of Copilot on Friday, framing it as a one-stop-shop for AI-assisted work. It’s the latest in a long series of short-lived branding efforts: Microsoft launched Bing Chat in February 2023 before renaming it to Copilot for Microsoft 365 the following month. Then in September, Microsoft released Copilot as a standalone product, before announcing less than a month later that Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise were being subsumed into Copilot. The following spring, the company unveiled “a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI,” called Copilot+ PCs; the company is now reportedly getting rid of that name following security concerns that have tarnished the devices’ reputation.

The latest Copilot centers on three modes, including Autopilot, which, as the name suggests, is an AI agent trained to handle long-running tasks without human oversight. It’s a rebranding of Scout , the “always on personal agent” that Microsoft launched within its 365 suite of apps at its Build developer conference in June. Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of Microsoft’s AI at Work division, described Autopilot in Friday’s announcement as a “digital teammate,” following a similar marketing tactic that other tech companies, like Slack , have used to sell their own agents.

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