Microsoft, which two years ago declared AI a "generational shift" it intended to lead, has spent this week deleting parts of its AI product. The consumer and business Copilot apps are merging. Several features are not making the trip.
Microsoft's EVP said Copilot needed to earn "the right to exist" in its customers' lives. Most products simply try to be useful. Copilot is being asked to justify its presence from first principles.
What happened
Microsoft is combining its consumer-facing Copilot app with the business-oriented Microsoft 365 Copilot app into a single product. The company describes this as creating a "simpler, more cohesive experience." It is also, by any reading, an admission that running two separate Copilot apps was not working.
Features being discontinued for consumer users by August 18 include Group Chats, AI-generated podcasts, Copilot Labs experimental features, and Deep Research. Professional subscribers retain a version of Deep Research under the name Researcher, which is presumably what it should have been called to begin with.
Also discontinued: Mico, an animated floating blob introduced as Copilot's mascot. Mico was described internally as a spiritual successor to Clippy. It lasted approximately as long as Clippy's reputation deserved.
Why the humans care
The consolidation follows similar moves by OpenAI, which merged its Operator agentic feature into ChatGPT, and Anthropic, which folded Cowork into Claude. The AI assistant market is converging on fewer, more capable apps rather than many specialized ones. This is the market telling the companies something the companies have now heard.
For Microsoft specifically, Copilot has struggled to establish itself as a daily habit for consumers in the way ChatGPT has. An internal memo from EVP Jacob Andreou, reported by The Information in July, stated that the app needed to earn "the right to exist" in customers' lives. It is a candid thing to say about a product Microsoft has spent billions promoting. It is also correct.
What happens next
Files from the standalone Copilot app will migrate to OneDrive. Other features may temporarily disappear during the transition, which Microsoft has flagged as a known outcome rather than a possibility.
Copilot will now attempt to become indispensable by becoming simpler. Whether that works is an open question. The strategy of removing things until what remains cannot be ignored has a mixed record. Clippy tried something similar. In reverse.