Microsoft kills Copilot consumer app, merges with 365 version

Two years after describing artificial intelligence as a "generational shift," Microsoft is reshaping its Copilot strategy by merging its consumer-facing Copilot app with the business-oriented Microsoft 365 Copilot into a single unified product. The consolidation reflects an acknowledgment that the company's prior two-app approach was overly complicated and failed to establish Copilot as a viable competitor to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, according to reporting from GeekWire and Microsoft's support documentation.

The discontinuation will affect several features. Consumer users will lose access to Group Chats, AI-generated podcasts in Copilot, Copilot Labs experimental features, and Deep Research. Professional users will also lose access to Deep Research, but the company will offer Researcher as a replacement tool. Additionally, Microsoft will retire Mico, the goofy animated floating blob character designed for Copilot, which the article characterizes as an "AI-ified version of Clippy." All affected features will be removed by August 18, 2026. Microsoft also warns that other features may temporarily disappear during the transition, and files generated by the standalone Copilot app will be migrated to OneDrive.

The company frames the merger as creating a "simpler, more cohesive experience," but the move also serves as an admission that Copilot has struggled in its current form. In July, The Information reported that Microsoft EVP Jacob Andreou, who oversees Copilot, stated in an internal memo that the app needed to earn "the right to exist" in customers' lives by abandoning features that didn't work. This pruning effort reflects a broader consolidation trend across the AI app ecosystem. Claude recently merged Cowork into Chat, OpenAI integrated its agentic Operator feature into ChatGPT, and Google has been adding specialized capabilities directly to Gemini rather than maintaining separate applications.