Microsoft officially released the redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot on May 28, unifying AI entry points scattered across various apps into a single, flexible workspace. The new interface adopts the design principle of “progressive disclosure”: the left sidebar centralizes agents, conversation history, and file references; the prompt box has been expanded and upgraded into a task-aware workspace that proactively recommends actions and next steps based on the current task; agent and tool controls are placed below the prompt box to reduce visual clutter. The overall response is driven by the Work IQ intelligence layer, which understands the user’s context and work patterns, and allows users to freely switch between different AI models such as OpenAI and Anthropic. According to Microsoft’s internal test data, the redesigned app loads twice as fast, and response time for complex questions has improved by approximately 10%; after the new experience was rolled out, Word usage increased by 27%, Excel by 33%, PowerPoint by 43%, and Outlook by 30%, covering a test sample of approximately 11 million commercial users each.
This redesign also marks a public correction by Microsoft of its earlier Copilot integration strategy—previously, the floating Copilot button obscured content, and Microsoft recently announced that users will be allowed to hide it. The new interface embeds Copilot into the sidebars of documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps, as well as at the content level of paragraphs, cells, slides, etc., enabling users to have Copilot operate directly on the canvas without leaving the current document, rather than jumping to a separate conversation window. The “Copilot Design System” project led by Chief Design Officer Jon Friedman is the driving force behind this redesign, aiming to create a unified, non-intrusive interactive experience for AI across Windows, Microsoft 365, Edge, and Bing.