Copilot is taking a major step beyond chat today with the debut of Copilot Tasks, a new AI-powered system that does more than answer questions — it quietly gets work done for you in the background. Instead of stopping at ideas, drafts, or suggestions, Copilot Tasks is designed to turn your natural‑language requests into real, completed tasks that run on its own dedicated computer and browser.
In a new Microsoft Copilot blog post, the company frames this launch as the beginning of the “second chapter” of AI, moving from conversational chatbots to action‑oriented agents that operate on your behalf. Copilot Tasks starts today in a limited research preview for a small group of users, with a public waitlist available as Microsoft refines the experience with real‑world feedback. The goal is ambitious: bring powerful agentic AI to everyone, not just developers, IT pros, or large enterprises.
From chat to getting things done
Copilot Tasks is essentially a self‑running to‑do list: you tell it what you want in plain English, and it figures out how to make it happen across the web, your apps, and your services. You don’t have to wire up tools, configure “agents,” or learn special syntax — you describe outcomes (“plan a birthday party,” “find a plumber,” “watch for new job listings”) and let Copilot break that down into multi‑step workflows behind the scenes. Check out this YouTube video of Copilot Tasks in action.
Under the hood, Tasks runs on its own cloud‑based computer and browser, which lets it browse the web, sign in to services, fill out forms, and coordinate information without interrupting your day. It then reports back with results, status updates, or draft outputs once it’s finished, so you can review and approve the final steps. Tasks can be configured to run once, on a schedule, or as an ongoing background automation that keeps checking for new information and acting on it.
Everyday scenarios Copilot Tasks targets
Microsoft’s early testing has surfaced a set of real‑world scenarios where Tasks can quietly remove digital busywork from your week. These fall into several buckets: recurring workflows, document and content generation, shopping and services, and logistics. Check out the video below
Recurring digital chores
If your inbox, calendar, and to‑do app constantly compete for your attention, Copilot Tasks is built to take over some of that routine triage.
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Every evening, it can surface only your urgent emails, pre‑write draft replies, and automatically unsubscribe you from promotional newsletters you never open.
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Every Friday, it can track new apartment rental listings in your area that match your criteria and go as far as booking showings.
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On Monday mornings, it can compile a briefing that combines key meetings, travel plans, and an analysis of how your time allocation lines up with your stated priorities.
These aren’t just static reports. Tasks is designed to keep doing the same thing week after week so you don’t have to keep asking, building persistent automations from natural‑language instructions.
Document generation and career workflows
Copilot Tasks is also aimed squarely at students, knowledge workers, and job seekers who spend hours each week turning raw information into structured documents.
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It can convert a course syllabus into a full study plan, complete with practice tests and focus time automatically blocked out before each exam.
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It can scan emails, attachments, and images in your mailbox and transform them into a polished slide deck, complete with charts and talking points.
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For job hunting, it can continually compile new roles that match your experience, then tailor your resume and cover letter for each specific posting.
Instead of manually copying data between Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, LinkedIn, and job boards, Tasks wires those steps together, letting you step in at the end to review and send.
Shopping, services, and appointments
On the personal side, Microsoft is positioning Copilot Tasks as a kind of AI concierge for life admin — the stuff that fills evenings and weekends.
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Planning a birthday party becomes an end‑to‑end workflow: find and book a venue, send invites, and collect RSVPs automatically.
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It can search for top‑rated plumbers in your area, compare reviews and quotes, and book the best option it finds.
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If you’re car shopping, it can watch used car listings 24/7, reach out to dealerships, and set up test drives without you needing to refresh websites all day.
These examples highlight Microsoft’s focus on “AI that talks less and does more,” quietly handling research, outreach, and scheduling while you focus on decisions instead of logistics.
Travel and subscription logistics
Another big area is travel planning and subscription management — two categories where timing and price changes matter.
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Copilot Tasks can reserve a ride aligned with your flight time and automatically adjust if your flight is delayed.
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It can monitor hotel rates after you book and auto‑rebook if the price drops, chasing savings you’d normally miss.
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It can scan your subscriptions, flag the ones you rarely or never use, and then help cancel them.
The emphasis is on continuous monitoring and timely action: you describe the guardrails once (“rebook if cheaper,” “cancel unused subs”), and Tasks handles the ongoing watch.
How Copilot Tasks keeps you in control
Despite the “to‑do list that does itself” positioning, Microsoft is drawing a clear line: this is not full autopilot. Tasks is explicitly framed as a copilot — a system that can do the heavy lifting but leaves key decisions and commitments in your hands.
To that end, Microsoft says Copilot Tasks is designed to request consent before it takes any meaningful action on your behalf, especially anything involving spending money or sending messages. You can review drafts, approve bookings, or sign off on emails before they go out. At any point, you can pause, edit, or cancel an active task, giving you a safety net if something changes or the automation isn’t behaving the way you expect.
Security and privacy details are still emerging, but the model of running Tasks on a dedicated cloud PC with a browser gives Microsoft a controllable environment for permissions and data access. That structure could make it easier to sandbox actions and maintain an audit trail — key considerations as AI agents start to interact more deeply with your digital life.
Research preview, waitlist, and what’s next
For now, Copilot Tasks is only available as a research preview for a small group of early testers. Microsoft is intentionally starting narrow: it wants to observe how people actually use long‑running, action‑oriented AI in the real world, then iterate on safety, UX, and reliability before rolling it out more broadly.
If you want in, there’s a public waitlist you can join at the Copilot Tasks site; Microsoft says it plans to invite more users into the preview over the coming weeks, with a broader launch to follow after the testing phase. The company is clear that this is “just the beginning” — a first step toward making agentic AI a mainstream part of how everyday users manage their work and personal lives, not just a tool for developers and automation pros.
For Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem, Tasks represents a strategic shift from AI as a chat window embedded into apps to AI as a behind‑the‑scenes worker that can orchestrate those apps on your behalf. If the preview goes well, Copilot Tasks could become one of the most visible examples yet of AI moving from answers to actions — and from conversation to completion.
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