Microsoft’s New Copilot Looks Like a Desperate Catch-Up Launch After Meta’s Muse
Microsoft has rebuilt Copilot around three experiences called Home, Code and Autopilot, bringing chat, Office, app creation and persistent AI agents into one product and they are calling it the new OS for Work.
The announcement landed on September 25, just weeks after Meta launched its new successful product Muse, an AI agent built around the idea that people should be able to hand work to an assistant and let it get on with it.
If we do just a little math here, Muse arrived on September 8 and quickly started drawing unusually strong attention from users.
By September 21, estimates from Apptopia reported by TechCrunch put Muse at 2.8 million global installs in its first 12 days.
In U.S. and Canadian iOS data, Muse had 1.8 million downloads during that period, compared with 1.3 million for ChatGPT during its first 12 days on mobile.
Apple’s App Store currently shows Muse with a 4.9 rating from 51,000 ratings and a No. 1 position in Productivity. Google Play shows a 4.7 rating from about 19,000 reviews.
Those numbers do not prove that every user loves Muse, but they show a level of early consumer response Microsoft would have every reason to watch closely.
Then Microsoft arrived with the so-called upgraded Copilot.
Microsoft is calling Copilot an “OS for work”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has described the new Copilot as a “new OS for work” on X, and the product is clearly being built around that idea.
- Home combines Chat and Cowork. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are now being brought directly into the Copilot experience.
- Code lets users describe an app, tracker, dashboard or workflow in plain language and have Copilot build it.
- Autopilot is designed to keep working in the background, following tasks, monitoring conversations and handling recurring work without waiting for another prompt.
This is not a minor Copilot refresh at all, I am impressed, but!
Microsoft is trying to turn Copilot from something people open when they need an answer into something that sits across the entire working day and people would use it as the core AI-enabled personal assistant for work.
One solid reason: an assistant for work!
The company has another reason to push "New Copilot" hard.
Microsoft said it had more than 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats in July, up from 20 million in April.
GeekWire noted that this represented only about 7% of the more than 450 million commercial Microsoft 365 seats Microsoft had reported earlier this year.
That leaves a very large audience still to convert, and it is also a reason why Microsoft is upgrading the Copilot from a chatbot to a complete agent.
The odd part is that Microsoft is unveiling this much larger vision at the exact moment competitors are making the AI assistant itself look like an ordinary consumer app.
Yes, Meta's Muse is like an everyday assistant that helps you with almost everything from social media to work on your mobile and other devices.
Muse got the simple part right
Meta’s Muse does not require users to understand a new AI workflow or learn new ways to interact with AI.
You tell it what you want done and it goes for it.
Meta says Muse can manage email, book travel and appointments, open a browser, fill out forms, negotiate on a user’s behalf, monitor ongoing tasks and continue working after the app is closed. Users can connect email, calendars, Instagram, Facebook, health and fitness data and financial information. Meta says users approve sensitive actions and can revoke connectors at any time.
Muse can even operate inside WhatsApp, which makes the product feel less like another enterprise application and more like an assistant people already know how to talk to.
That is where Microsoft’s presentation starts to feel slightly late and off the rails.
The key difference here is:
Copilot has more machinery behind it. Muse has a simpler proposition.
One tells you that it can connect chat, Office, coding, agents, Microsoft IQ, plugins, business data and usage controls.
The other says: give me the job.
For an ordinary user, that difference matters.
There is an easy misconception here.
Copilot is not cut off from outside tools.
Microsoft says a new plugin registry will bring Microsoft, partner and custom-built plugins into one catalog. Administrators can approve and manage those plugins, while developers and partners can publish them for supported Copilot experiences.
That is a substantial system.
It is built for companies that need permissions, governance, security controls and centralized administration. Microsoft is trying to make AI agents acceptable inside businesses that cannot simply hand an autonomous assistant unrestricted access to sensitive systems.
Muse takes a different path as it is made for general public use.
Meta puts connectors directly in front of the user. The user decides which services Muse can access and what it can do. Its app listing pitches email, calendars, Instagram, Facebook, health, fitness and financial data as things people can link to the agent.
That makes Muse feel more open to the person using it, even though Microsoft may have the deeper enterprise integration framework.
For consumer accessibility, Muse currently feels like the easier product to understand.
That is why Microsoft’s timing feels desperate
Microsoft has been working toward this Copilot redesign for months. Nadella first promised the unified experience at Build, then said it would arrive during the current quarter. Friday’s announcement met that deadline with less than a week remaining, and several of the headline features are still rolling out through the Frontier program or private preview.
That does not prove Microsoft rushed the product because of Muse.
It does make the sequence hard to ignore.
- Meta launches Muse on September 8.
- Muse starts climbing the app charts.
- Third-party data shows unusually fast early adoption.
- Meta expands Muse again at Connect on September 24, including plans to bring it to AI glasses.
- Microsoft unveils its rebuilt Copilot the next morning.
Seen together, the rollout gives Copilot the feel of a company trying to close the gap quickly.
Microsoft has too much invested in workplace AI to sit still. OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing increasingly capable agents directly into business workflows, and GeekWire reported that Microsoft itself positioned the new Copilot as an answer to those rivals. Microsoft is even letting customers switch among models, including OpenAI and Anthropic models, rather than forcing them into a single model family.
That is smart product positioning.
It is also a sign that Microsoft knows the old Copilot formula is not enough anymore.
Copilot may be exactly what Windows users need
There is still one area where Microsoft has an advantage that Meta cannot easily copy.
Windows users and Microsoft 365 customers already live inside Microsoft’s ecosystem.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and enterprise data are already part of the working day for millions of people. Microsoft can put an AI layer across those systems without asking a company to rebuild its existing workflow around a new platform.
The new Office integration is particularly useful. Microsoft says people can work on real Word documents, Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations from inside Copilot, with changes remaining synchronized with the traditional Office applications.
That could make Copilot the natural AI control center for a Windows and Microsoft 365 workplace.
But being the natural choice is not the same thing as being the most exciting AI assistant.
That is where Muse currently has the advantage in the experience itself.
Muse feels like the product people expected AI agents to become
The most interesting thing about Muse is not its model.
It is the expectation that the assistant should actually do things.
- Book the reservation.
- Check the inbox.
- Track the price.
- Follow up.
- Fill out the form.
- Watch the situation.
Ask for permission when money or sensitive communication is involved.
Then keep working after you close the app.
Meta's own documentation makes that promise explicit, and the app store listing reinforces it.
Microsoft is now promising much the same kind of future, but with the weight of a huge enterprise software system attached to it.
That gives Copilot tremendous power.
Muse gives the user a much cleaner reason to care.
For us, that is the striking part of Microsoft’s September 25 launch. Copilot is bigger, more deeply wired into workplace software and potentially far more useful inside a Microsoft-controlled organization. Yet Muse feels more natural as an AI product for people who simply want to hand an assistant a task and get on with their lives.
Microsoft (however) needed Copilot to become an operating system for work.
After watching Muse take off, it suddenly looks like Microsoft needs that operating system sooner than it expected.
And that makes this otherwise impressive Copilot launch feel a little desperate to me.
