Microsoft is combining its consumer Copilot app with Microsoft 365 Copilot, while removing several underperforming AI features. The change is intended to simplify a fragmented product strategy and make Copilot more competitive with services such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, while recognising that personal and work uses of AI overlap.

By 18 August 2026, consumers will lose Group Chats, AI-generated podcasts, Copilot Labs and Deep Research; professional subscribers will instead have access to Researcher. Microsoft is also retiring Mico, Copilot’s animated character, moving standalone-app files to OneDrive and warning that some features may briefly disappear during the transition. The move follows an internal acknowledgement that Copilot needed to “earn the right to exist” in users’ lives by dropping features that had not succeeded.