Microsoft AI Tools: Copilot, Copilot Studio and Foundry

Microsoft’s AI tools fall into four groups. Microsoft Copilot is the assistant: a chat app for personal and work accounts, plus Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Copilot Studio and Copilot Notebooks are where you shape that assistant, with agents you build and notebooks you ground in your own files. GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant. Microsoft Foundry, the platform formerly called Azure AI Foundry, is where developers build their own AI apps and agents on Azure. Windows adds a fifth, smaller set of features on the PC itself. Which one a team needs depends on the job, not on which is newest, so this guide goes job by job and ranks none of them.

A note on names, as of October 1, 2026

Microsoft has been renaming. Microsoft 365 Copilot is now called Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now Microsoft Copilot Chat. Microsoft says the old names persist in some licenses and screens during the transition, and its own overview pages still label license tiers “Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic)” and “Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium)” in the same article that announces the new names. On the developer side, Azure AI Foundry is now Microsoft Foundry and Azure AI Services are now Foundry Tools. If you see two names for one thing, they usually are one thing.

The Microsoft AI family at a glance

• Microsoft Copilot (personal): a chat assistant for anyone with a Microsoft account, and Copilot in the desktop Office apps for the owner of a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium or Pro subscription.
• Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Chat (work): the same app signed in with a work or school account, with Copilot Chat for eligible Microsoft 365 users and the full Microsoft Copilot license adding grounding in your organization’s data.
• Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams: drafting, analysis, email summaries and meeting recaps inside the apps.
• Copilot Notebooks: one workspace per piece of work, answering from the files, emails and meetings you add.
• Copilot Studio: a low-code studio for building agents and workflows.
• GitHub Copilot: an AI coding assistant, licensed separately.
• Microsoft Foundry: the Azure platform for building AI apps and agents in code, with a large model catalog.
• Windows AI features: Recall, Click to Do and other features on Copilot+ PCs, plus experimental agent features for Windows Insiders.

Microsoft Copilot for personal accounts

There is now one Copilot app for personal and work accounts. Microsoft’s page on changes to the Copilot app↗ (opens in a new tab) says you can sign in with a personal account, a work or school account, or both, and switch between them. The same page records what went away: Podcasts, Deep Research and Group Chat were retired on personal accounts on August 18, 2026. Earlier Deep Research reports stay in your chat history, and Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers use the Researcher agent for that kind of work instead.

Who gets what: the free Copilot chats, searches the web and creates images. A Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium or Pro subscription adds Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook, for the subscription owner only. Premium adds agents such as Researcher and Analyst. People a Family plan is shared with do not get the Copilot features.

Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Chat at work

At work, the difference that matters is grounding. Microsoft’s overview of Microsoft Copilot↗ (opens in a new tab) describes three experiences. Copilot Chat answers from the web and from whatever you upload or have open in Outlook or Teams. A middle tier, which Microsoft still labels Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic), adds standard access to Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote without the add-on license. The full Microsoft Copilot license adds priority access and grounding in your organization’s email, files, meetings, calendars and chats through Microsoft Graph and Work IQ, always limited to what each user is already allowed to see.

Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams

• Word: draft, rewrite and summarize documents.
• Excel: analyze data, suggest formulas and build charts.
• Outlook: draft email, summarize threads and coach on tone.
• Teams: summarize and transcribe meetings and capture action items. The meeting side is covered in AI meeting note takers, and planning work in Planner, Teams and Loop in Microsoft Copilot for project management.

The new Copilot: Home, Code and Autopilot, in preview

On September 25, 2026, Microsoft announced a new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot↗ (opens in a new tab). Home puts Chat and Cowork in one place and builds Word, Excel and PowerPoint into Copilot. Code lets people who do not program describe a small app, dashboard or widget and have it built, running in a sandbox inside the organization’s tenant. Autopilot is a persistent agent with its own identity that runs recurring work and follow-ups. All of it is preview: Home and Code roll out through Microsoft’s Frontier program, Autopilot is in private preview, and a fourth piece, Today, a prioritized view of your email, calendar and tasks, enters private preview in October. Plan around it only once it reaches your tenant.

Copilot Notebooks

A notebook gathers the files, emails, meetings and pages for one project and answers only from them. How it compares with ChatGPT and Claude projects is in Copilot Notebooks vs ChatGPT Projects vs Claude Projects.

Copilot Studio: where agents are built

Microsoft describes Copilot Studio↗ (opens in a new tab) as a low-code studio for building and managing agents and workflows, connecting them to your organization’s data and publishing them to Teams, Microsoft Copilot, websites and other channels. It is aimed at makers and IT teams rather than every employee. What it builds and when to use it is in Copilot Studio explained, and worked agent examples are in Microsoft Copilot agents.

GitHub Copilot: for developers

GitHub Copilot suggests code as you type, answers questions about a codebase, reviews pull requests and works on tasks you assign it. Microsoft lists it as a separate product that does not need a Microsoft Copilot license; individuals can start on Copilot Free. The fenbs blog covers it in depth, starting with the GitHub Copilot coding agent and GitHub Copilot CLI.

Microsoft Foundry, formerly Azure AI Foundry

When a team wants to build its own AI app rather than use Copilot, it goes to Foundry. Microsoft’s page What is Microsoft Foundry?↗ (opens in a new tab) describes agents, models and tools under one Azure resource, with access to more than 10,000 models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and others. You can build a prompt agent in the portal with no code, or deploy a hosted agent that runs your own code, for example one written with the Microsoft Agent Framework. It needs an Azure account and is for developers; nobody in sales needs to open it.

Windows AI features

Some of Microsoft’s AI runs on the PC. On Copilot+ PCs, Recall↗ (opens in a new tab) is a preview feature that saves encrypted snapshots of your screen to the local drive so you can search what you saw; it is off until you opt in. Click to Do acts on text and images on screen, such as summarizing a paragraph or removing an image background. Separately, experimental agent features that let an agent work in its own Windows account are off by default, can be turned on only by an administrator of the device, and are limited to Windows Insiders.

Which Microsoft AI tool fits which job

• Ask questions and draft text with no setup: Microsoft Copilot or Copilot Chat.
• Work inside your own documents, email and meetings: Copilot in the Office apps, with the full license if answers must draw on your organization’s data.
• Keep the sources for one project together: Copilot Notebooks.
• Automate a business process or give a team its own assistant: Copilot Studio.
• Write and review code: GitHub Copilot.
• Build an AI feature into your own product: Microsoft Foundry.
• Find something you saw on your PC last week: Recall, on a Copilot+ PC.

Most teams need one or two of these, not all of them. If you are weighing Copilot against a standalone assistant, see Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT. For calendar and inbox help on your own account, see AI personal assistants.

Where the task list fits

Copilot can find the work in your email and meetings, but it does not keep a team’s task list. fenbs is a task board where people and AI assistants are members with roles, and a Copilot Studio agent can reach it through its MCP server at https://fenbs.ai/api/mcp. The agent reads the rules on the Decisions and rules page first, files features, enhancements and bugs with a priority from 1 to 10, moves them through To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed, and every change shows in History with who made it. fenbs has no due dates, reminders or settable assignee, so deadlines and owners go in the task note.