Microsoft has announced the launch of Copilot Cowork, a fusion of Anthropic’s popular agentic AI tool with its own in-house chatbot.
The new tool is currently in preview with a “limited set of customers” and will be made available through the tech giant’s Frontier program in late March.
Unveiled by Anthropic in January, Claude Cowork is an agentic AI workflow orchestration tool which essentially acts as a digital assistant. Users can allocate agents to automate specific tasks, such as file management or sending emails, and the solution works in tandem with other tools such as Claude Code.
Cowork has proved highly popular since launching, with sector-specific plugins aimed at automating tasks spanning areas such as data analysis, marketing, and legal
With Copilot Cowork, Microsoft appears keen to capitalize on the automated workflow gains reported by users of the tool.
In a blog post announcing the integration, Charles Lamanna, Microsoft president for business applications and agents, said Copilot Cowork “makes it easy to delegate work”.
“Over the last year, we have been pushing Copilot toward taking action. That means completing tasks, running workflows, and doing work on your behalf,” he said.
“Copilot Cowork is built for that: it helps Copilot take action, not just chat.”
Copilot Cowork in action
According to Lamanna, Copilot Cowork is in preview with a “limited set of customers”, but so far, testing of the tool has allowed users to speed up administrative tasks such as meeting preparation and market research.
Notably, with Copilot Cowork, users can “triage” time management, allowing the tool to review Outlook schedules and identify scheduled clashes or “low-value meetings”.
Elsewhere, the tool is also being used to support meeting preparation for users, helping generate slide decks and documents.
“Preparing for a customer meeting can consume your afternoon”, Lamanna noted. “With Cowork, you can hand off the effort from start to finish.”
Lamanna added that Cowork can pull “relevant inputs” from email communications, meetings, and files to generate briefing documents and various documentation for users.
These are automatically saved to Microsoft 365, meaning teams can go back and fact check and refine documents.
How to get your hands on Copilot Cowork
The Copilot Cowork reveal coincides with the launch of a new AI-focused Microsoft 365 tier.
As ITPro reported last week, speculation about the launch of a new dedicated AI subscription has been mounting.
Customers hoping to use Copilot Cowork can get their hands on the tool through the newly announced E7 tier for Microsoft 365, also announced by the tech giant today.
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