Microsoft IQ and Copilot Cowork/Scout: AI agents move from chat to autonomous execution

Microsoft is maturing its Copilot from a conversational feature into a platform for autonomous business processes. The announcement of the complete Microsoft IQ product family at Build 2026 marks a step where AI is not just generating text but executing multi-step tasks on a user's behalf, accessing both company data and real-time external information. The company's edge is that it already sits on a vast trove of enterprise data through Microsoft 365 and related services, giving its models a rich, contextual foundation for work-related queries.

Compared with human-facing interfaces, outputting results in token-efficient formats like JSON or Markdown may seem like a technical detail, but it is central to the shift toward agentic AI. It reflects an intent to minimize the friction of AI agents consuming data, potentially making them more viable for everyday business workflows. The integration of a data lake (Fabric IQ), a work-behavior model (Work IQ), and a low-latency web search layer (Web IQ) suggests a deliberate move to cover several bases an autonomous agent would need, from tapping into a company's internal knowledge to staying current with the outside world.