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Microsoft Teams Licensing Updates: More Premium Features for Everyone

Microsoft has announced some big changes to the Teams licensing model, aimed at making more  advanced features available to everyone along with updates to their Places products set which is now firmly more rooted as a key part of Teams.

These changes reflect Microsoft’s commitment to  democratising advanced collaboration tools and to keep adding value to their core products without the need for premium licenses to unlock core value.

These updates, effective 1 April 2026, will impact organisations of all sizes. Here is what is changing.

1.Microsoft Places Now Broadly Available

Yes, I thought they had forgotten about it as well! But not..

Microsoft Places which was originally only part of Teams Premium will now be available to anyone with access to Microsoft Teams and Office users making it a core subcomponent of Microsoft 365 for anyone with the following license.

  • Microsoft 365 E3 / E5
  • Microsoft 365 Business Basic / Standard / Premium
  • Office 365 E1 / E3 / E5
  • Exchange Online

What is Microsoft Places?

Microsoft Places is a set of apps and services designed to provide rich meeting and space management to enhance and enable the hybrid meeting experience. It includes

  • Places Finder: Provides rich meeting location details, including images and floorplans.
  • Places Explorer: Adds map-based reservations, people, and space visibility.

The key value of places (and why it needed to just be part of Teams) include the ability to auto rebook rooms if more people are attending in person that the room can fill, notify you if you are joining a meeting remotely when you and others are in the same building and tools to help you navigate and find places, people and spaces more effectively in the workplace.

2. Teams Shared Devices becomes Teams Shared Spaces

This change of name from the Teams Shared Devices license to Teams Shared Space also provides IT with the following management capabilities under the common name. It includes.

  • Bookable desks
  • Teams panels
  • Shared spaces


There also new capabilities which include:

  • Space management
  • Desk booking
  • Space analytics
  • And more integration with third-party APIs including Building Management systems.

The ability for Places to integrate with (more) 3rd-party sources of spatial data, floorplans, check-in signals should make adoption better by streamlining the onboarding and management of the spaces in the Places Directory.

3. Town Halls and Webinars for Enterprise

Previously exclusive to Teams Premium Users only, Town Halls and Webinars style meetings  will now be available to all Teams Enterprise customers. With this everyone gets default meeting capacity or up to 3,000 attendees and up to 10,000  for stream only events.

Microsoft have also introduced “attendee packs”
2hich can be purchased to increase limits up to 100,000 attendees

This is a major enhancement for organisations hosting large-scale events without needing Teams Premium Licenses.

Read more here.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/licensing-updates-extend-access-to-advanced-capabilities-in-microsoft-teams-and-/4488312

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M365 Copilot Image Generation Levels Up, and Video Summaries are coming to Copilot Notebooks

Microsoft has kicked off 2026 with two significant enhancements to Microsoft 365 Copilot – both providing a clear signal to how improvements in multi-media creation in AI will support creativity, communication, and knowledge sharing across the workplace.

The first is a major upgrade to Copilot’s image generation capabilities with the rollout of OpenAI’s GPT‑Image‑1.5 model. The second is a new capability that turns Copilot Notebooks into automatically generated video summaries (in addition to the voice / podcast over views). These are both in preview for organisations enrolled into the Copilot Frontier Preview.

Whilst subtle – these make Copilot more useful, more expressive, and more multi-modal in the flow of work. Read on for more detail.

GPT‑Image‑1.5 Creation comes to Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft is good at getting new features into Copilot Quickly. Just before Xmas 2025, Copilot was updated to support the latest GPT5.2 models and now they are replacing OpenAI’s GPT‑4o with GPT‑Image‑1.5 across the Copilot’s image generation experiences. This will gradually roll out through January 2026. This includes Copilot Chat and the wider “Create” module in Copilot.

For organisations already using Copilot to create internal comms assets, presentation visuals, campaign concepts, or quick mock‑ups, this upgrade is most welcomed. The quality gap between “AI‑generated” and “designer‑produced” continues to narrow, and the speed improvements make Copilot even more viable for rapid ideation. Image creation in AI tools has come on massively in just a few months.

One of the key upgrades is the ability to updates aspects of an image (via a prompt) or take over and edit with Microsoft’s Image Designer Tools directly from Copilot. You can see the difference in the example below (you’ll need to zoom in sorry)!

What is GPT-Image-1.5?

This latest model from OpenAI is their answer to Google’s highly regarded Nano Banana image models – This is (according to experts), “on par” in terms of fidelity, instruction following, and realism, plus it’s included at not additional cost to Microsoft 365 Copilot users.

According to Microsoft, once rolled out, users can expect:

  • Sharper prompt adherence – especially for composition, style, and on‑image text
  • More precise region‑specific editing with fewer unintended changes
  • Higher‑quality visuals with more realistic lighting, textures, and detail
  • Faster generation – up to 4× quicker for many prompts
  • Better consistency when iterating on faces, colours, and lighting.

Video Overview in Copilot Notebooks

Microsoft is introducing Video Overviews – the ability for Copilot to automatically generate a short, narrated video summary of a Notebook’s content. This adds to the current audio overview feature and is rolling out to organisations enrolled in the Frontier Preview, Other organisations will get this in due course – keep an eye on the official Roadmap for this one.

This enhanced the existing overview feature, allowing Copilot Notebook users to:

  • Analyse the full Notebook
  • Extract key insights
  • Generate visuals
  • Produce a narrated video summary in first person, interview or podcast style

Think of it as a dynamic, visual executive summary – ideal for sharing updates, explaining concepts, or turning long‑form thinking into something more digestible.

Copilot Notebooks are a powerful space for iterative thinking, brainstorming, and structured problem‑solving in solo or shared mode. But they’ve also been static, plus you still had to read them. The ability to have audio or video overviews make these much more digestible, quicker to consume and are great for helping consume content in their preferred way.

Whilst Google’s NotebookLM has had this feature for a month or so, this is the first time Copilot is turning your content into multimodal output without requiring any video editing skills (or even prompting) at all. It’s a glimpse of a future where:

  • Documentation becomes auto‑summarised
  • Content is consumable in ways that meet the user’s need.
  • Knowledge becomes more accessible

I’m personally really interested to see how well Copilot handles narrative flow, visual selection, and pacing. If Microsoft gets this right, it could become one of the most impactful features in the Copilot.

Summary

In short, these subtle but impact updates point to the same trajectory of where Copilot is heading – becoming a fully multi-modal assistant, not just a text‑based one.

  • GPT‑Image‑1.5 – higher‑fidelity visual creation
  • Video Overviews – automated multimedia storytelling
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Satya Nadella’s Call for an “AI Reset” – What Business Leaders Must Prioritise in 2026

Cut out image of Sayta Nadella

As I finished my first week back to work of 2026, I was thinking about Microsoft’s Satya Nadella’s end‑of‑year reflection blog post “Looking Ahead to 2026“ which he wrote at the end of December 2025.

This for me landed at an important moment for the industry. After a year dominated by “AI slop,” concerns over whether the AI boom was ending and stock prices in key AI stocks becoming a bit rocky. In the Microsoft space, there has been some “backlash” about how much AI Microsoft are “pushing” in their products and the industry in general failing to really get big AI initiatives off the ground. We then of course have the upcoming chip shortages (which remind us back to COVID times) with AI cited as the cause of these shortages (memory especially) with AI Data Centres demand exceeding supply.

We have seen huge advances in AI models from Open AI, Google, Anthronic and Microsoft this year but the news has really been coined with the term AI Slop – with AI appearinf to be baked into everything whether people want it or not – who ever thought Notepad in Windows would get the Copilot treatments!!

Despite the negative press, AI is still very much the buzz word (heck, its driving all those component and chip shortages). At work, our clients are still talking about it, driving it forward and investing more into adoption, enablement and consultative engagements. Businesses remain “excited” about the opportunity AI can bring to businesses, consumers and the world!

In his blog post, Satya Nadella argues that we’re finally moving from discovery to diffusion. The message is clear: 2026 must be the year we separate spectacle from substance.

This rest of my blog looks at Nadella’s framing, the wider industry commentary, and what it means for organisations that need AI to deliver measurable value – not just noise with AI Slop or no slop!

From “bicycles for the mind” to “scaffolding for human potential”

In his blog, Satya Nadella revisits Steve Jobs’ famous metaphor – computers as “bicycles for the mind” – and argues that it no longer captures the scale or nature of modern AI. Instead, he positions AI as scaffolding: a structure that supports, amplifies and extends human capability rather than replacing it.

This is a subtle but important shift. It reframes AI not as a tool we operate, but as a system that surrounds us — shaping how we work, decide, and collaborate.

Coverage from the Economic Times reinforces this by highlighting the need to move beyond the novelty phase and focus on real‑world impact. In short, the industry must stop debating “slop vs sophistication” and start designing systems that genuinely improve human cognition and outcomes.

From what I see with my engagement with business leaders, it means moving away from app and model‑centric thinking (what is better ChatGPT or Copilot) and towards systems engineering within our line of business. We need to look at how our business works today, where AI fits and where automation counts. Businesses need to work with Microsoft, with their technology partners and most importantly from within, to plan and deliver measurable outcomes.

“Aiming to please” is not alignment

One of the most important – and least discussed issues in business led AI is the tension between:

  • AI that aims to please (reinforcement learning from human feedback, training, safety tuning, helpfulness scoring) where AI is just that assistant, that Copilot!
  • AI that is aligned (truthful, reliable, predictable, value‑consistent and therefore really useful) which is much more important as we look for it to help us make decisions, take action and do stuff!

These are not the same thing.

Research throughout 2025 showed that models tuned to be more “helpful” often become more sycophantic, more agreeable, and more likely to produce confident but incorrect answers. An interesting article I found from “PC Gamer” cites Microsoft‑linked research suggesting that over‑reliance on AI tools can actually reduce user capability over time due to the mind set of “AI can do anything” whilst at the same point “we don’t trust AI”. So, which is it?

This re-enforces Satya’s view that as we enter 2026, the priority must shift from “does it sound good?” to “does it stand up to scrutiny?”

The AI race is real – and so is the concentration of power

AI is now a currency and we are seeing this everywhere. Leaders cite it, big tech companies are embracing it and the models are doubling in capability in less than a 12 month cycle (some say 8 months). Compute, data, and model access are becoming strategic assets – we are seen this through component shortages! These global hyper-scalers and a handful of model labs will capture disproportionate value, and enterprises will increasingly depend on them for:

  • model access
  • agent frameworks
  • safety and alignment layers
  • orchestration platforms
  • compute and optimisation pipelines

This shouldn’t be seen as negative, but it does require deliberate strategy. Vendor lock‑in, opaque safety layers, and proprietary agent ecosystems will shape enterprise risk profiles for years.

Then there is the vast number of other tech venders embracing the security and safety layers – in the dozens these are and will appear to sell you AI Safety and Security tools, while we wait for the leading AI models and companies to bake this is. Firms like Microsoft will likely do this well and make it part of their security and compliance approach across their wider platforms. others will or may lean to other vendors through partnerships.

The biggest gap perhaps is still user awareness, adoption and controlling shadow-IT. This becomes very more important as organising and the world begin the next pivot shift from AI assistants to autonomous AI.

Again, Satytas’ blog acknowledges this indirectly: the industry does not yet have “societal permission” for widespread autonomous AI. That permission will depend on trust, governance, and measurable outcomes – not just capability.

Two strategic paths for Corporate and Enterprise AI?

We look at two different paths for how organisation use and leverage AI. The oath for superior intelligence and the path that recognises AI’s purpose as cognitive scaffolding.

Path A: Pursue superior intelligence

  • Focus on emergent capabilities and autonomy
  • High potential upside
  • High systemic risk
  • Harder to govern, audit, and predict

Path B: AI as cognitive scaffolding

  • Focus on augmentation, reliability, and workflow integration
  • Measurable value
  • Lower risk
  • Requires strong systems engineering

Satya calls out that most organisations will need to operate somewhere between these paths, but that the balance must be intentional.

What IT leaders should prioritise in 2026

There have been lots of posts around this from many different players, analyst firms and now little ol’ me! For me, nothing much has changed since last year (though the models have got cleverer, faster, cheaper!)

Outcome‑based evaluation: Benchmarks and demos are not enough. Businesses need to look at real use cases, go deep with proof of value production pilots. they need to determine what good looks like. It will likely require solutions/use cases that deliver task‑level accuracy, has no (minimal) hallucination, and longitudinal user‑impact studies which they can be loud and proud of.

Human‑centred design: This partly means no AI for AI’s sake. That said user familiarisation and confidence (like Internet Skills once were) are key for trust and understanding Departments need to surface provenance, uncertainty, and verification steps in putting AI to work. Moving beyond assistive to authorative AI should not be done lightly – trust is everything and humans being in the loop is vital in order to avoid “auto‑execute” defaults for high‑risk actions.

Governance and entitlements: IT and compliance need to have (and enable in the case of Copilot for example) auditing to track which agents can access which data and enforce least‑privilege by default. Audit everything, Trust nothing, Training everyone and Pilot, Pilot, Pilot, test, test, test.

Red‑team testing and observability – This goes beyond security and governance – this is about trusting AI to act like a human would. Use cases need to ensure they test for sycophancy, bias, adversarial prompts, and silent failure modes – for AI to world in place of human roles, there needs to be trust, failback and no “time outs” in the middle of a conversation with an agent.

Skills protection – Training is key to ensure organisations pair automation with training to prevent deskilling of people and upskilling of how inference and AI models work. We need to document everything, know what expected outcomes are and re-evaluate each business process, AI model and task our AI is performing. We need to preserve the entity of what our business is about this is the human factor) and retain our rooted institutional knowledge.

Final reflection

Sayta Nadella’s call to move beyond “AI slop” is timely and what many leaders are thinking. It’s hard to beleive it is less that 2 years since Copilot make it’s general availabiloity to the masses and the industry has spent these two years chasing and demaning more capability, bigger models, flashier demos, and viral outputs.

As we sit here, closer to 2030 than we are to 2020, 2026 demands something different. AI needs to deliver on the promises. This is less about the AI and more about how organisations re-shape, re-invest and rebuild business modes, systems, and processes with AI in mind. Technology change is not quick and simple and AI is not (in most cases) not a quick fix answer to underlying issues. For IT pros and business leaders, the message is clear:

  • Demand measurable value in pilot and projects
  • Prioritise trust and governance and use a model/tool that fits into what you have
  • Treat AI as scaffolding, not a substitute for good processes and people
  • Build for augmentation, not automation (in the immediate term)
  • Evaluate outcomes, not optics and do in phases.

The AI race will continue to get faster, we will hear more success stories, more doom and gloom, feel left behind because we are not moving fast enough and people will worry more about job losses, environmental impact and cost. The economics will only intensify, but I believe that the organisations that win will be those that operationalise AI responsibly, at the right pace, deliberately, and with a clear understanding of where the real risks and opportunities lie.

Thanks for reading or listening. Happy 2026!

References / Sources in this doc

  • Economic Times — “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls for a big AI reset in 2026…”
  • PC Gamer — “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says it’s time to stop talking about AI slop…”

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What is Copilot Checkout? Microsoft and PayPal’s new AI-Powered Commerce Experience.

Microsoft and PayPal have officially joined forces to launch Copilot Checkout, a groundbreaking integration that redefines the online shopping experience. This collaboration merges Microsoft’s conversational AI capabilities with PayPal’s trusted payment infrastructure, creating a seamless journey from product discovery to purchase all within the Copilot interface on Windows, app and the Web.

It’s rolling out initially in the USA and works with partners including PayPal (and later), Shopify, Stripe, and Etsy.

Intelligent Discovery Meets Trusted Payments

Copilot Checkout will allows users to browse,  evaluate, and complete purchases (check out) directly from within Microsoft Copilot experience, eliminating the need to switch between different apps, devices or websites. By embedding PayPal’s agentic commerce services, the experience becomes not only faster but also more secure and flexible.

Key Features of Copilot Checkout

  • Conversational Shopping: Users interact with Copilot to explore products, compare options, and make informed decisions.
  • Integrated Payments: PayPal will power the end to end checkout flow, offering branded and guest checkout, credit card support, and even PayPal wallet integration.
  • Merchant Enablement: Retailers are able to surface and promote inventory, and reach high-intent customers at the moment of decision without loosing to the “buy later crew”

Benefits for PayPal sellers and consumers

For sellers:

  • Let’s them reach customers during high-intent moments
  • Reduce friction and cart abandonment and avoids the buy later mind set.
  • Expand visibility across Microsoft touch points such as Bing, Edge, and of course Copilot.

For Consumers:

  • Enables fast, flexible and in the moment checkout options (Amazon experience)
  • Stay within the Copilot experience from start to finish to ensure customers do not have to shift platforms, devices or apps.
  • Benefit from PayPal’s buyer protections and payment versatility.

Early Adoption and Ecosystem Impact

In this early stage of the partnership the early adopters include major brands including Etsy and Urban Outfitters.

What’s more Shopify merchants are auto-enrolled, while PayPal and Stripe sellers can opt in for this experience (Microsoft will need to convince them and sell the value).

This rollout marks a significant step in the evolution of agentic e-commerce, where AI agents act on behalf of users to simplify and accelerate transactions.

PayPal and Microsoft Partnership.

In the annoucement, Michelle Gill, GM of Small Business and Financial Services at PayPal, said:

“By integrating PayPal’s agentic commerce services with Copilot’s intelligent shopping platform, we are enabling seamless, reliable transactions for both merchants and consumers.”

Kathleen Mitford, CVP of Global Industry at Microsoft shared:

“Retailers can automate what slows them down and amplify what sets them apart.”

What and when?

Copilot Checkout will be come more than just a new hidden feature. Following OpenAI (and expect Google to follow), Microsoft and PayPal are looking to reshape consumer behaviour and drive more footfall to Copilot and PayPal. This is just the start and Microsoft plan to work with other e-commerce providers.

The joint goal is to redefine how brands connect with customers in real time, with intelligence and trust at the core from both PayPal and Microsoft.

For more insights, visit PayPal’s announcement or explore Microsoft’s commerce vision.

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What is Copilot Real Talk Mode? And how to use it.

Back at the “Fall update in October”, Microsoft announced that a new talk mode called “Real Talk” was coming to Copilot. This has been available in the US for a while in preview but is now available in the UK and other regions.

This (currently) optional chat mode allows Copilot to better adapt to the user’s tone by adding more personality, wit, and even “playful” challenges in its responses. This new mode “real talk” offers a more balanced and engaging conversational style that is designed to be more honest like a true “friend” whilst still staying polite. One of the critiques of many chat bots is that they “tell you what you want to hear”. Real Talk, aims to address this by providing a more balanced, open and honest conversation but still without being rude!

Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s CVP of product and growth for AI, talks about this mode as being able to understand and “mirror” the user’s attitude, offer its own perspective, and not simply agree with everything said by the human. “Real talk aims to create a more interactive, human-like dialogue that goes beyond providing straightforward information. It will provoke users to think by occasionally questioning or offering alternative views, making conversations with Copilot more stimulating“.

How to use Copilot Real-Talk mode

This new mode is accessible through a dropdown menu and is currently limited to text chats (so not yet available in Copilot’s voice chat interface).

Copilot Real-Talk Moe

It’s available in the Windows Copilot App, Web (at https://copilot.microsoft.com) and mobile.

You can also switch to Real Talk mode at any point, but this does start a new conversation. To do this simply click the drop down and change the voice mode:

Copilot Real-Talk in Action

In this example, I gave Copilot a simple statement where I said, “Many people still think the earth is flat – what do you think about that?“. I run this in Copilot’s default chat mode and then again in “Real Talk” mode.

I’ve also created a video on this where I go into more detail.

Copilot Standard Chat Response

The response tone and length was quite typical – a balanced view, not wanting to say the wrong thing and looking at both angles whilst still stating facts.

"It’s a fascinating example of how belief can diverge from evidence.

From a scientific standpoint, the Earth being spherical isn’t up for debate. It’s supported by centuries of observations and measurements, including satellite imagery, GPS systems, gravity measurements, time zones, airline routes, and even how shadows behave at different latitudes. These aren’t abstract theories; they’re practical realities that modern life depends on every day.

What is interesting is why flat‑Earth beliefs persist. They tend to be less about geography and more about psychology and trust:

- Distrust of institutions – Some people see flat‑Earth ideas as a way to reject governments, scientists, or perceived elites.
- Community and identity – Belonging to a group that “knows the truth” can be powerful.
- Misunderstanding of science – Scientific methods can feel opaque or intimidating, making alternative explanations seem appealing.
- Algorithmic reinforcement – Online platforms can amplify fringe ideas by repeatedly showing similar content.

I don’t see flat‑Earth belief as a failure of intelligence. It’s more a failure of critical thinking skills being nurtured and a breakdown in trust between experts and the public. When people feel excluded from knowledge, they’re more likely to reject it entirely.

The real challenge isn’t correcting the shape of the Earth; it’s rebuilding curiosity, scientific literacy, and trust in evidence-based reasoning. That’s a much harder problem—and a far more important one."

Copilot Real-Talk Mode Response

This was much more concise and to the point. What do you think and what do you prefer?

It's wild that in 2025, with satellite photos and physics we use daily (like GPS literally requiring round-earth calculations), some folks still reject basic science. The psychology behind it fascinates me though—it's less about evidence and more about wanting to feel special, distrust of institutions, or finding community in shared beliefs.
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Copilot gets free GPT‑5.2 upgrade with “Smart Plus” mode

Microsoft has begun rolling out GPT‑5.2 across Copilot on the web, Windows, and mobile as a free upgrade. It sits alongside GPT‑5.1 rather than replacing it, giving users a clear choice between speed and deeper reasoning.

GPT‑5.2 is described as OpenAI’s strongest model series so far, designed to accelerate real work: building spreadsheets and presentations, writing and reviewing code, analysing long documents, using tools, and working with images. Copilot only moved to GPT‑5.1 for Smart mode in November, and Microsoft is now introducing GPT‑5.2 as a new “Smart Plus” option.

GPT5.2 gives higher‑reasoning model for complex tasks

The updated version of Open AI’s GPT arriving in Copilot is the “Thinking variant” of GPT‑5.2 – the same model Microsoft highlights for complex, multi‑step tasks and strategic reasoning.

GPT5.2 – Benchmark performance data

OpenAI’s own release notes describe GPT‑5.2 Thinking as expert‑level for well‑specified office tasks and significantly more reliable than previous models. Industry benchmarks reinforce this:

  • On knowledge‑work tasks across 44 occupations (GDPval), GPT‑5.2 Thinking beats or ties industry professionals 70.9% of the time (vs 38.8% for GPT‑5). 
  • Coding performance is significantly higher, scoring 55.6% on SWE‑Bench Pro and 80% on SWE‑Bench Verified — both ahead of GPT‑5.1 Thinking. 
  • It posts strong reasoning scores: GPQA Diamond 92.4%, AIME 2025 100%, and CharXiv Reasoning with Python 88.7%.

Microsoft Makes Model Choice a core Copilot feature

Microsoft has also rolled out GPT‑5.2 into the commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio products, where it appears in the model selector alongside GPT‑5.1 and GPT‑5.2 Instant. This aligns with Microsoft’s broader strategy of giving users explicit model choice depending on the task.

In Microsoft 365 Copilot, GPT‑5.2 connects to Work IQ (aka Microsoft Graph) – Microsoft’s intelligence layer that reasons across meetings, emails, documents, and organisational data to unlock insights and strategic planning scenarios.

More Value for Copilot users

Microsoft frames this as part of its ongoing commitment to model choice across Copilot experiences, ensuring users can pick the right model for the job rather than relying on a single default. For consumers this is huge value as Open AI still make the 5.1 and 5.2 models exclusive to premium subscribers whereas Microsoft give the latest models for free (both in Windows 11 and on the web and mobile apps).

For the non commercial / enterprise version, Smart Plus becomes the “high‑reasoning” lane inside Copilot. It’s designed for:

  • Multi‑step workflows 
  • Strategic analysis and planning 
  • Complex document understanding 
  • Code generation and review 
  • Tasks that benefit from slower, more deliberate reasoning 

GPT‑5.2 Instant remains the fast, everyday model, while GPT‑5.2 Thinking powers Smart Plus for deeper work.


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Automatic Alt Text on Copilot+ PCs: A Small Feature with a Big Accessibility Impact

Microsoft has rolled out a useful update to the Office Suite apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint which creates automatic, “on‑device” Alt Text generation for images. This is a great way of helping content become more inclusive by providing automatic (but editable) descriptions of images, graphics, graphs etc. This helps screen readers and also AI tools better understand documents.

Alt Text Auto Generation is for Copilot + PCs only

This great feature leverages the on-chip NPU of Copilot+ PCs and is currently not available on older (non-AI) PCs. Sometimes the most valuable improvements are the ones that make good practice the default — especially for accessibility and inclusion.

Image of someone with hands in air emotionally speaking

This is a great way of ensuring content becomes meaningfully accessible by default.

You don’t need to do anything to enable this feature. You will need to be running the latest version of the Office apps on your device.

  • Word, Excel and PowerPoint now generate Alt Text instantly as you insert images.
  • The processing for this happens on‑device, so nothing is sent to the cloud.
  • It’s currently only for Copilot+ PCs, taking advantage of the NPU
  • Authors can still edit or override the generated text, keeping humans in control.
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How to get free security updates for Windows 10

If you are a home/consumer user using Windows 10 – because you are unwilling to, or unable to (due to hardware restrictions) to upgrade to Windows 11, and not able or wanting to buy a new modern PC, this blog shows you how to take advantage of Microsoft’s free Security updates for Windows 10 until 13th October 2026.

First…head over to Windows Update. Here you may be offered the last Windows Update, but will also see the option to “enroll in extended security updates”.

Click [enroll now].

Microsoft will check your eligibility – must be Windows 10, must not be a corporate device (therefore not Active Directory or Entra ID Joined) and must be a licensed version of Windows.

Assuming you see the message above (which you should), click [Enrol].

Thats it – enjoy free Windows 10 updates until 13th October 2026 whilst you get ready to upgrade, buy a new device or move off Windows to another OS as Windows 10 will be 11 years old when your free security updates expire…

Windows 10 came out in 2015…..that’s an old OS now – older than COVID-19 🙂

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GPT-5.2 now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft has just (11th Dec) started rolling out OpenAI’s GPT‑5.2 across Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, marking another significant leap in AI-powered productivity.

The differences between GPT5 and GPT5.2 provide “a significant upgrade in performance across various metrics”. For example, GPT-5.2 has achieved higher scores on benchmarks like ARC-AGI2 and GPQA Diamond which indicate improved abstract reasoning and scientific knowledge. In coding tasks, GPT-5.2 outperformed GPT 5.0 and 5.1 in accuracy and speed. The model also excelled on CharXiv Reasoning an AIM 2025 scores which measures LLMs capabilities in advanced mathematics and problem-solving.

The update delivers two models under one banner:

  • GPT‑5.2 Thinking, ideal for deep reasoning and complex problem-solving, and
  • GPT‑5.2 Instant, tailored for everyday tasks like writing, translation, and learning – all now integrated into Work IQ for actionable insights across emails, meetings, and documents.

    Within Microsoft 365 Copilot, (as this rolls out), users are able to manually select GPT‑5.2 from the model menu in both Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio, enabling smarter decision-making for tasks such as:
  • Preparing insights ahead of meetings.
  • Conducting comparisons and analysis such as market research of reviewing reports.
  • Extracting strategic takeaways linked to objectives and milestones.
Model Selection for GPT5.2 in Copilot Chat

Microsoft has sad that Copilot Studio agents will transition automatically from GPT‑5.1 to GPT‑5.2 in early-release environments and early in 2026, the default model in Copilot Chat will shift from GPT 5 to GPT5.2

These improvements therefore deliver improvements for tasks requiring complex reasoning and problem-solving skills. How their fair in day to use will be down to you as user to evaluate and determine. For now – we get the choice to dip in and out.

This rapid launch reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to offering model choice allowing users to access the latest innovation tuned for enterprise-grade security, compliance, and performance.

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When the Cloud Sneezes: a look at the ‘Outage Season’

The past few months have been a bruising reminder that even the biggest cloud providers can stumble. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Cloudflare have all suffered major outages, disrupting any services that rely on them from websites to shopping sites to CRM and Finance systems and AI tools. For businesses (and their customers / users) there cause huge problems, lower confidence, impact services and reputation. Many are asking what happened, why and what can be done about it?

The Outages – What Happened?

There’s been a fair few this autumn, some causing performace issues, others huge impacts bringing  down lots of services. Most recent examples include:

  • Amazon Web Services (20 October 2025): A DNS automation bug in the US‑East‑1 region corrupted internal records for DynamoDB, cascading into failures across Lambda, API Gateway, and thousands of downstream apps which then replicated across other regions. 
  • Microsoft Azure (29 October 2025): A faulty configuration in Azure Front Door’s CDN nodes caused global downtime, impacting Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and airline systems. 
  • Cloudflare (two recent ones – 18 November & 5 December 2025): According to their support pages, the first outage was the result of a bot‑management configuration file which got too big and grew beyond expected limits, crashing traffic‑handling software worldwide. The recent one last week, was different, caused by a firewall update triggered a bug, disrupting almost a third of (29%) of HTTP traffic globally. 


Whilst we hear a lot about cyber threats (similar to the CrowdStrike problem a couple years ago) these were not cyber-attacks or capacity limit failures. They were internal configuration and metadata errors. This may have been bad change management, inadequate fail back and validation controls or something else!

What are these Providers doing about it?

As you’d imagine, these major cloud providers need to tell their customers what is going on, provide assurance as to their stability and ability to recover. Following these, each have (and remember every cloud service does suffer outages from time to time for a number of reasons) has a requirement to update customers on the root cause and long term strategies to improve resilience. As an example:

  • AWS have said they are rolling out their “Route 53 Accelerated Recovery” and will be partnering with partnering with Google Cloud for multi‑cloud failover. This will be part of their premium resiliency services.
  • Microsoft have committed to strengthening their change‑management processes, checks and controls and are publishing detailed post‑mortems.
  • Cloudflare, in similar vein to Microsoft, are adding extra guardrails to monitor more controls and configuration parameters to prevent issues such as oversized configuration files. They are also committed to improving their Web app firewall testing and failover services.

How can organisations can be better prepared

It’s always tough when a business relies on Cloud providers to host and power their business as their hands can be tied and them left a little helpless when outages or performance issues occur – often it’s the visibility (or lack of) of what is happening that is most daunting for organisations and for IT. Whilst the benefits of cloud are not being disputed here, businesses can find themselves in tricky situations, having to answer to their customers, the board and shareholders as outages to their business can cause everything from mild inconveniences to value and reputational damage.

A multi cloud strategy can of course help, mitigating some of the impact of an outage of one, a hybrid (on prem/cloud) approach can do the same, but each of these add huge amount of complexity to their infrastructure management and cost so it’s about weighing up the impact and cost vs impact cost.

So, what else can organisations do then?

Visibility and Early Warnings

With any cloud service, it is often the visibility (or lack of) of what is happening that is most daunting for organisations and for IT. Just like tsunami warnings or those sniffles you get that let you know you have a cold or flu coming, there are services that can provide a holistic view across all your cloud services and help IT understand the continuous, predicted and previous performance and reliability of such services.

Cisco ThousandEyes as an example, is an incredible powerful service that provides end‑to‑end visibility across Internet Service Providers (ISPs) SaaS, and all cloud providers.

It helps detect outages early and quickly, can pinpoint root causes (DNS, CDN, SaaS, routing), and prove whether performance issues or service outages are external or internal. There are also plug-ins for desktops devices and browsers that can do this for remote and cloud users.

ThousandEyes also offers digital experience monitoring for apps like Microsoft 365, Service Now, Salesforce, and Zoom, and they have AI‑driven insights to flag risks before they cascade.

It can’t fix it as such, but if do have failovers, contingencies or DR in place, it can help organisations prepare, understand where the issue is and how to help communication with leadership, customers and other stakeholders and sooth the stress (slightly) of diagnosing the issues.

Failover Services

Of course, visibility and understanding are great but depending on how big the risk and cost of these outages, many organisations (many giant content providers do this) are looking at ways to add more contingency, failover, etc.

Where the issues are with DNS or content delivery providers, many organisations look at leveraging Multi‑CDN/DNS providers with auto Failover. This can help keep traffic flowing by rerouting when one provider fails. 

These tools often provide their own native cloud monitoring. Whilst not as in-depth as Thousand Eyes, they will typically provide dashboards that provide telemetry and status of these services and can instigate failover automatically or on-demand.

Cloud providers also provide their own status and performance monitoring tools often with in-depth telemetry but limited of course to their own platforms.

Chaos Engineering

This is really the approach, organisations will ypically employ as part of their DR/BC planning. Chaos Engineering is essentially the process organisations use to simulate outages to enable them to validate (and improve) their recovery plans before the real thing happens. This of course needs cultural buy-in, a continuous improvement approach and awareness across different aspects of their environment to ensure the impact of such outages can have. Again – visibility tools can help.

Insurance Safety Net

Even with resilience tools in place, redundancy and well architected fail-over solutions, outages will always happen, and this can mean lost revenue. Many “tech” insurers offer cyber insurance with many also offering “business interruption cover”, compensating for lost earnings due to outages caused by IT fails. I’ve not gone into details here, but some of these include:

  • Hiscox UK: Offers optional cyber business interruption cover, including income loss if systems fail. 
  • Clarke Williams Insurance Brokers: Provides Dependent Business Interruption (DBI) coverage for third‑party service failures, such as internet or cloud outages. 
  • Grove & Dean Insurance Brokers: Offers cyber insurance with explicit business interruption protection, covering lost income due to downtime from cyber incidents. 

This means UK businesses can not only plan for resilience but also insure against the financial impact of outages. Of course, a continuous increase in outages may increase these insurance premiums….

Conclusion

The cloud outages at prove that cloud isn’t “always on”, despite the various up-time (sometimes financially backed) SLAs providers promise. Providers are tightening controls, but businesses must assume failure and design for resilience. Whilst observability tools like Cisco ThousandEyes can’t stop an outage, they do help you see them faster, understand them better, and recover more effectively.

Combined with multi‑cloud strategies, failover planning, chaos testing, and cyber insurance with business interruption cover, organisations can turn inevitable outages into manageable events — protecting both operations and earnings.

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More Anthropic Models coming to Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft is making a major change to how AI models are integrated into Copilot experiences. From 7 January 2026, Anthropic’s models will be enabled by default for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, moving away from the current opt-in setting to a standard feature under Microsoft’s own contractual terms rather than Anthropic’s.

What’s Changing?

  • Default Enablement: Anthropic models, which were previously optional, will now be switched on by default for most commercial cloud customers. UK and EU/EFTA customers will find this OFF by default, requiring manual opt-in for others it will be ON.
  • Microsoft Sub processor Status: Anthropic is now a Microsoft sub processor, meaning its operations fall under Microsoft’s Data Protection Addendum and Product Terms (previously Anthropic use was under Anthropic own Commercial Terms).
  • Admin Controls: A new toggle should now be active in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre.

Why It Matters

This update extends Microsoft’s enterprise-grade data protection standards to Anthropic-powered Copilot features and makes more of a secure broker around AI models with less of a dependance on just Open AI. Working with companies like Anthropic in this “AI sub-processor” approach ensures:

  • Contractual Safeguards: Anthropic operates under Microsoft’s direction and compliance frameworks.
  • Choice and Flexibility as well as ensuring access to specific models to perform the best tasks drive quality and refinement to Copilot.
  • Enterprise Data Protection: Your data remains covered by Microsoft’s commitments, including the DPA and Product Terms.

Why Microsoft Is Adding Anthropic Support

Microsoft’s goal is to give organisations more choice and flexibility in Copilot experiences. Anthropic’s Claude models are known for strong reasoning and safety alignment, which complements Microsoft’s own AI capabilities. By onboarding Anthropic as a subprocessor, Microsoft can:

  • Offer advanced generative AI features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Copilot Studio.
  • Maintain consistent compliance and security standards across all integrated models.
  • Enable customers to select external models for specialised use cases without sacrificing enterprise-grade protections.

Regional and Cloud Exceptions

  • UK & EU/EFTA: Toggle remains OFF by default; admins need to opt in.
  • Government & Sovereign Clouds: Anthropic models are not yet available.

Controlling access to other AI Provides like Anthropic

To do this, head to the Admin Centre, Go to Copilot, Settings and choose Data Access Tab

Decide if to enable (or disable)

Looking Ahead

This change signals Microsoft’s commitment to expanding AI capabilities responsibly by leveraging the best model for the job or task. Enabling Anthropic (and other models) unlocks richer functionality – especially in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Copilot Studio – while maintaining strong data protection standards and still giving organisations choice.

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Microsoft 365 Price Changes: Preparing for July 2026

With over a 1,000 new features and updates across the Microsoft 365 stack in the last couple of years, Microsoft has confirmed that the commercial Microsoft 365 suite will undergo pricing increase from July 1, 2026.

This follows “adjustments” to Personal and Home subscriptions at the end of the summer, and now the Enterprise/Commercial side is being reshaped to reflect the growing set of features delivered in the suite especially around AI and Security which have both had significant investments and updates.

For customers, partners, and technical teams, the key is not just to note the new numbers, but to understand how to plan ahead, optimise licensing, and make sure you’re getting the most value from the platform. 

Updated Microsoft 365 Pricing from July 2026

Microsoft 365 SuiteCurrent List PriceList Price (July’26)% Increase
Business Basic $6.00$7.0016.67%
Business Standard$12.50$14.0012%
Business Premium$22.00$22.000%
Office 365 E1  $10.00$10.000%
Office 365 E3$23.00$26.0013%
Microsoft 365 E3$36.00$39.008.33%
Microsoft 365 E5$57.00$60.005.26%
Microsoft 365 F1$2.25$3.0033.33%
Microsoft 365 F3$8.00$10.0025.0%

What’s Driving the Change

As usual with such price changes, they will apply globally with local market adjustments for our commercial products and nonprofit pricing will be adjusted in line with commercial pricing

Microsoft is pointing us to understand and recognise the value and breadth of new features delivered across the suite. Recent additions include: 

  • Copilot Chat (which always has the latest AI models available at no cost) now embedded across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, with inbox and calendar understanding plus Agent Mode for iterative document and presentation creation.
  • Microsoft Loop and Copilot Notebook feature as well as huge updates and simplification of add on suites.
  • Security improvements such as Defender for Office P1 expanded to E3, URL checks added to E1 and Business SKUs, and Security Copilot embedded directly into Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview for E5 customers.
  • Management tools like Intune Remote Help, Advanced Analytics, and Intune Plan 2 now included in E3/E5, with Endpoint Privilege Management and Cloud PKI in E5. 

Looking Beyond the Price

Whilst many will look at this and think “wow that’s already expansive”, it’s important to look beyond this as just a greedy cost increase.

Microsoft like to remind us of the extent of new features added across the stack and the value these product suites still bring.

New capabilities added (c) Microsoft

Whilst many will naturally re evaluate the value proposition (which they should), it is worth considering the wider business value of Microsoft 365 and this is a good time to take stock, keep calm and review the value of the suite and your other technology and subscription investments.

  • Consolidation of tools: Many organisations still pay for third-party add-ons for endpoint management, analytics, or security. With the Intune Suite now bundled into E3/E5, there’s an opportunity to simplify and reduce spend. 
  • Security Copilot: AI-driven security capabilities are now part of the platform, reducing the need for separate tools and helping teams respond faster. 
  • Integrated management: A single, consistent approach to endpoint, identity, and compliance reduces complexity compared to juggling multiple vendors.

Re-Evaluating the Business Value.

Via your Microsoft Partner, it’s worth looking beyond the cost and looking at structured tools like a business case builder to quantify the impact and refresh the value of the software tools you use across the business. It’s also worth looking at all your other subscriptions to see what duplicate products/tools you have as well as what tools you own but don’t use (or even know about).

These help weigh not just the headline subscription costs, but the wider opportunity to consolidate vendors, reduce duplication, and strengthen compliance…and adopt what you have invested in! 

Security and compliance are prime areas for this conversation. 

  • IDC forecasts global security spending will reach $377 billion by 2028, growing at over 12% year-on-year. Much of this spend is fragmented across multiple point solutions, with organisations often layering overlapping tools for endpoint, identity, and compliance. 
  • Gartner projects worldwide information security and risk management spend will hit $213 billion in 2025, rising to $292 billion by 2028. At the same time, Gartner highlights that enterprises are juggling more SaaS applications than ever, with tool sprawl creating duplicate spend, compliance blind spots, and security risks. 

Whilst there is an argument for not putting all ones “security eggs” in the same basket, many organisations have many duplicate security and compliance tools. This is not just a financial issue – it creates operational drag. Multiple consoles, inconsistent policies, and siloed reporting make it harder for IT and security teams to respond effectively. 

In contrast Microsoft 365’s integrated approach with Intune Suite for endpoint management and Security Copilot embedded across Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview offers a path to reduce reliance on third-party add-ons. Consolidation here can mean:

  • Lower total cost of ownership by retiring duplicate tools. 
  • Improved compliance posture through consistent policy enforcement. 
  • Simplified management with fewer contracts, renewals, and integrations to maintain. 

Preparing for the change

  • Talk to your licensing partner to understand the impact on your organisation.
  • Explore price lock-in options on longer-term SKUs to mitigate the increase – before July 26. 
  • Optimise and right-size your licensing to ensure you’re not paying for unused features. 
  • Review where Microsoft 365 can replace standalone products from endpoint management to security to unlock better value and integrated management.
  • Use a business case builder to model the cost of current third-party tools against the integrated capabilities now included in Microsoft 365. 
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Microsoft Ignite 2025 – “The Agentic Shift”

Microsoft used Ignite 2025 to tell the world that “agents are now the primary interface for enterprise work“. The focus throughout Ignite was about evolution from chat-bots to multi-discipline teams of agents across organisations and the unlaying architectural envelopments being done to make this work.

Agents are already changing how people work, and IDC predicts there will be 1.3 billion agents by 2028. Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the infrastructure you trust to manage your people to agents.

This was about spelling out the developments across platform and the unifying of intelligence layers so agents can be treated as identity‑bound workers and allow security and governance to be baked in in the same way we manage human workers today. Below is a summary of the key aspects and ingredients of this approach.

For more on the latest developments and Microsoft Research on AI Frontier Firms, check out the WorkLabs

Fabric IQ

What it is: Fabric IQ layers semantic meaning and business ontologies on top of data stores so agents reason in terms of customers, orders, assets, and events rather than raw tables.

Why it matters: Agents that lack consistent business context make brittle or risky decisions. Fabric IQ gives agents a shared vocabulary and entity model, reducing ambiguity across analytics, automation, and agent workflows.

Example: A retail replenishment agent uses Fabric IQ to translate “low stock” signals into SKU hierarchies, supplier lead times, and regional demand forecasts. The agent then creates the correct purchase order, selects the right vendor SLA, and schedules delivery windows – cutting stockouts and manual reconciliation time.

Foundry Control Plane

What it is: Foundry will become the unified platform for building, routing, and operating agents with model selection, versioning, and governance hooks built in. It includes a built‑in control plane that brings security, observability, and cost signals directly into the developer experience. It surfaces alerts, policy violations, performance issues, and budget warnings where teams already build – and exposes Microsoft Entra, Defender, and Purview controls as simple toggles so identity, data protection, and threat detection can be enabled without re‑architecting toolchains.

Why it matters: Foundry reduces model selection risk, standardises deployment patterns, and makes governance a first‑class concern rather than an afterthought. It’s the place teams certify agents, attach policies, and monitor behaviour. It means developers can ship agents that are secure from day one, remain protected through updates, and automatically flow into Agent 365 governance at deployment. By meeting teams in their existing workflows, Microsoft removes much of the friction between building agents and securing them — a much needed “fix” for an area that has tripped up many enterprises and halted mass adoption.

Example: A financial services team certifies an underwriting agent in Foundry. The control plane enforces data access policies, routes sensitive scoring to on‑prem models, and produces audit trails for regulators – enabling faster production rollouts without compromising compliance.

Agent 365

What it is: Agent 365 treats agents like employees: Entra identities, scoped permissions, lifecycle management, and telemetry. It produces a security framework for how agents should be deployed and managed within an organisation. It gives IT and SecOps teams a single, consistent way to discover, manage, and secure agents wherever they’re built.

Agents are already changing how people work, and IDC predicts there will be 1.3 billion agents by 2028. Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the infrastructure you trust to manage your people to agents.

Microsoft Ignite 2025

Agent 365 extends Entra ID with the same controls organisations already use to manage their people into the agent world with a – Entra Agent ID for identity and access, Defender for threat detection and posture, and Purview for data protection and compliance. Rather than new tools, this provides the familiar surface control plane where agents can collaborate and interact with users, keeping behaviour visible inside the tools people already use.


Why it matters: When agents have identity and governance, organisations can scale fleets safely. You can onboard, revoke, and audit agents the same way you manage human users.

IT gets a central registry of every agent across the estate; developers can register third‑party or custom agents via SDKs; and security teams gain continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and enforcement capabilities such as conditional access.

For organisations wrestling with shadow AI and governance gaps, Agent 365 is a practical answer – it treats agents as first‑class entities that must be onboarded, scoped, audited, and revoked just like human accounts.

Example: An HR department deploys multiple document‑generation agents. Agent 365 ensures each agent only accesses approved templates and employee records, preventing accidental PII exposure and making incident investigations straightforward.

Azure Copilot for Cloud Ops

What it is: Azure Copilot orchestrates specialised cloud agents for migrations, observability, remediation, and optimisation – this can turn runbooks into agent workflows.

Why it matters: Cloud operations shift from manual dashboards to intent‑driven orchestration. Agents can triage, remediate, and coordinate across services faster than human‑only teams.

Example: During a cross‑region outage, Azure Copilot coordinates agents to triage logs, roll back a faulty deployment, and provision temporary capacity – reducing mean time to recovery from hours to minutes.

Conclusion

Ignite 2025 reframeed “AI” from an add‑on to an operational fabric for every organisation as we start to transition into the next phase of AI maturity and adoption.

Microsoft’s combination of Fabric IQ, Foundry and Agent 365 creates a practical path to agentic operations for business, but success still very much depends on the fuel for AI – disciplined data modeling, governance by design, and small, measurable pilots.

Organisations that treat agents as governed, identity‑bound teammates will be the ones that gain speed and resilience fastest – those that don’t face sprawl and risk and stalled or failed initiatives.

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What is Work IQ?


Microsoft Ignite 2025 focus this year saw Microsoft fully committed to Agentic AI as the next platform layer. Across all of the briefings, keynotes, technical sessions, and partner announcements, Microsoft repeatedly emphasised that AI is no longer an add-on – and that is becoming the “operating system” for modern work.

Alongside this was the announcement of Work IQ at Ignite 2025 was probably one of the biggest impact announcements – which was announced during the day 1 keynote – hosted by Judson Althoff (CEO of Commercial Business at Microsoft) and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky.

What is Work IQ?

Work IQ was positioned as a multi-level intelligence layer that delivers company-specific, job-specific, and user-specific data to inform Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents. This was not about smarter tools, models or even a new first party agent, but instead was about Microsoft playing true to their initial vision of Copilot whereby (unlike other AI tools), about a new layer of contextual intelligence that adapts to how your organisation actually work. 

This layer actually includes Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ – each designed to accelerate AI innovation and support organisations in becoming Frontier Firms. But Work IQ is the cornerstone of what this all about.

Microsoft positioned Work IQ as being built on three pillars: 

  • Inference – ability to connect dots, predict next actions, and recommend the right agent. 
  • Data – the rich knowledge inside emails, files, meetings, and chats and Entra ID  
  • Memory – your specific preferences, habits, and workflows. 

This framework enables Copilot to access data, retain memory, and understand how tasks and tools interact. Inference helps predict the most suitable action or agent for each job. 

Work IQ is deeply integrated into Microsoft 365 apps like Word and Excel, enabling Copilot to continuously learn through what Microsoft calls an AI-powered feedback loop. This loop far surpasses traditional connectors by retaining context and evolving with your business. 

Instead of reactive assistants waiting for prompts before acting, Work IQ interprets relationships, intent, and context. It connects documents, meetings, and workflows into a living map of organisational knowledge, powered by the Microsoft Graph- a competitive advantage no rival can match.  Whilst other AI’s such as ChatGPT can “plug-in” to Microsoft 365 via APIs, this is nothing compared to the power of the Microsoft Graph (which is what WorkIQ is). Work IQ (the Microsoft Graph) is about value creation inside the governance boundary. Work IQ respects permissions, compliance, and sensitivity labels, making it a trusted foundation for enterprise AI. 

Agents Powered by Work IQ

Work IQ is also the engine of the agent era. Agents can only act independently when they understand environment, history, dependencies, and intent. Without context, an agent is just a reactive assistant with a fancier name. With Work IQ, Microsoft enables true agentic behaviour – agents that can coordinate, reason, and act across the enterprise. 

This aligns with Microsoft’s broader vision of “Frontier Firms” – organisations that are human-led and agent-operated. Microsoft say that, already, more than 90% of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Work IQ is set to deepen that reliance by embedding intelligence into everyday workflows.  This got huge cheers at Ignite!

With Work IQ, Microsoft are raising the standard of the AI workplace – positioning itself as the core intelligence layer of the modern organisation and building the foundation of the next decade of digital work.   

What about other 3rd Party AIs?

Many of Microsoft’s Competitors are able to “plug in” to either apps though plug ins.  ChatGPT, Gemini, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Atlassian etc can all build smart vertical intelligence inside their own stack or products, but in terms of the wider enterprise context, they operate in silos. Even with APIs, they do not have the awareness, context and breadth of reach that Microsoft has with the connected Microsoft ecosystem and the Graph. They lack a unified fabric, and without it, they cannot deliver the seamless agentic experience Work IQ enables. 

Microsoft’s isn’t trying to win the AI assistant market as such; they are building the architecture for the agentic workplace. Think of it as the difference between building a smart car versus building the entire road system it drives on. 

Final Thoughts

Work IQ as the missing piece that makes Copilot more than a productivity tool. It’s the connective tissue that transforms AI from assistant to organisational intelligence. 

The real question is how quickly enterprises will adapt to this new standard, and how competitors will respond when Microsoft have just raised the bar so high. 

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Windows at 40: Milestones that changed computing for ever

Windows at 40

It was Forty years ago (now that makes me feel. Old) that Microsoft launched Windows 1.0. This was a graphical shell that was layered over MS-DOS. Whilst it was clunky, slow, and barely usable – it created the framework and vision for what would become the Windows that has powered work and creativity for decades. 40 Years ago, was the time Back To The Future was in our Cinemas – just to put that time into perspective.

Today, Windows powers billions of devices across the globe. As it has evolved over the decades it has become more than just an operating system it has marked a place in history. From iconic cursors and start up chimes, the start menu, voice assistants and now the shift from menu and mouse driven interactions to voice and AI-driven agents. Windows has evolved through eras of innovation, fan fair releases, a few missteps, re-invention and innovation.

At Ignite this week, Microsoft has also unveiled its vision for an “agentic OS” in Windows 11 25H2 (with very mixed views) but today, here’s a look back at the milestone releases that truly changed computing. Here I dive into the history milestones as we celebrate Windows at 40!

The GUI Awakens (1985–1992)

Windows 1.0, released in 1985 – introduced the business world to the graphical user interface. Windows gave us windows, icons, mouse and pointers (the WIMP environment). It was a radical shift from command-line computing and MS-DOS, although initially Windows was essentially a shell that still run in Microsoft Disk Operating System (MSDOS).

Image (C) Wikipedia


Windows has updates over the years with Windows 2.0, 3.0 and then 3.1 and 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups). This brought mass adoption and became the stable at work. We had network printers, Program Manager, Task Manager, File Manager, and the introduction of TrueType fonts which made Windows the OS for business and publishing.

The Desktop Revolution (1995–2000)

In 1995, Microsoft released, arguably the biggest innovation to the Windows OS ever, which still is deep rooted in the Windows we know and use today. Windows 95 brought 16-bit computing, much loved Start menu, taskbar, and revolutionary hardware plug-and-play support which completely defined the modern desktop environment we know today. A year later, Microsoft Internet Explorer was released which wiped the floor with all other Internet Browers at the time and quickly wiped Netscape from existence.

We also saw the launch of the “Microsoft Network” or MSN and saw IM tools like Instant Messenger and the early modern browsers powered by those dial-up modems we all loved and hated!

Oh…and we can’t forget the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)!

Security and Stability As Standard

In 2000, we saw Windows 2000 – an enterprise-grade, secure Operating System built on their Windows NT 3.51 and 4 Server Operating System. This was built on the NT (New Technology) secure kernel (rather than the underlaying MSDOS) and became the backbone for future releases of Windows.

Stability and Dominance (2001–2009)

In 2001 (with major updates in 2002), we saw the release of Windows XP which will always be remembered for the “teletubby wallpaper”.

Windows XP Desktop

Windows XP unified the consumer and business experience. It was loved for its more friendly interface, rich graphics, powered in-box apps. It was also the first version of Windows that actively supported (or tried) to support pen, ink and touch. Whilst this was probably ahead of its time, we saw a new range of touch tablets (this is pre-iPad days) with Windows XP Tablet Edition. – Check out my blog of the RM Windows XP Tablet.

Windows XP powered homes, cash point machines, hospitals, and offices for over a decade.

In 2009, Microsoft gave us Windows 7. Arguably this was the most “loved” Windows Operating System ever – according to multiple sources. It was a sleeker version of Windows XP but also very familiar, meaning adoption rocketed.

Windows 7, restored user trust after Windows Vista (a poor and rushed attempt at refreshing Windows XP which). Windows 7 was fast, stable, and became dominant in commercial, public sector and enterprise IT.

Twenty four years later – it’s still not uncommon to see the odd device, information screen etc pop up still running this OS !

The Service Update Era (2012–2015)

In 2012, along with Microsoft’s first attempt launch of Tablet and touch computing (again maybe too early), we got Windows 8 -and then Windows 8.1. This was mainly a flop with the world not being ready for such a major shift to the UI, with a bold, touch-first redesign which mirrored that of the Windows Mobile.

Microsoft (to the hate of users), removed the Start menu (which they did bring back in Windows 8.1) and introduced their Metro UI which features innovative “live tiles” and the also introduced to the app store. There was also an ARM based version of Windows 8 to run on Surface RT devices – Microsoft’s again (too early) attempt of Windows on ARM – which today is what powers many Copilot Plus PCs and many of the world’s smart phones.

Then in 2015, we got Windows 10. This was the first version of Windows that essentially didn’t have versions as Microsoft shifted to “Windows as a Service.” This gave us continuous updates, cross-device integration and an OS that supported a blend of traditional Windows 7 style and aspects of the Metro / Live Tile interface of Windows 8.

Windows 10 on Surface Pro


The AI Frontier (2021–2025)

As we existing Covid-19, Microsoft unveiled Windows 11. This was built on the reliability and stability of Windows 10, but brought a fluent design, centred taskbar, and (later) Microsoft Copilot AI integration. A modern aesthetic with AI at its core.

Image (c) Bleeping Computer

This autumn, Microsoft released Windows 11 25H2 which marks the 40th anniversary of Windows. At Ignite in November (this month at time of writing), Microsoft unveiled their vision for an agentic OS – the next evolution of Windows, where AI agents orchestrate tasks across apps and devices. This could be a bold leap into ambient computing – but again there are many that would rather Microsoft left Windows alone and left the AI stuff to optional apps.


Final Thought

Windows has always been a mirror of its time — from GUI to cloud, from mouse to touch, and now from manual to agentic.

As we celebrate 40 years, we’re not just looking back. We’re standing at the edge of a new paradigm. The next chapter isn’t about what Windows does its about infusing AI into our workflow and apps.

With the change in how people use and access their devices and role of AI in our lives, the question is – what will Windows look like at 50!

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With Security Copilot now part of Microsoft 365 E5 – what do you actually get?

At Ignite this week, Microsoft announced that Security Copilot will now be included in Microsoft 365 E5 (and E5 Security) at no additional cost. Security Copilot delivers “AI-powered, integrated, cost-effective, and extensible security capabilities” that elevate an organisations IT Security Operations or SOC’s efficiency and resilience.

So, what does it actually include and what are the catches?

1. Integrated AI-driven defense across the Microsoft stack

Security Copilot agents are natively embedded into Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview, which means that IT / Sec teams don’t need to juggle separate tools. This allows for a single, cohesive workflow where identity, endpoint, data, and threat protection are all reinforced by AI and can be reviewed, configured and monitored with just a prompt!

2. Autonomous and proactive protection

As part of this announcement, Microsoft has also introduced a dozen new AI agents that enable “agentic defense” — adaptive, autonomous responses to threats. Instead of just alerting, Copilot can recommend or even automate actions, helping teams stay ahead of evolving attacks or reasons for concern and to plan for action.

3. Included at no additional cost with E5

For Microsoft E5 customers, Security Copilot will now be included as part of the core entitlement.

Here’s the important part: Organisations receive 400 Security Compute Units (SCUs) per month per 1,000 users, scaling up to 10,000 SCUs/month — enough to cover (Microsoft say) most typical enterprise scenarios without extra spend.

4. Faster incident response and investigation

Copilot in Copilot Security is designed to accelerates triage, root cause analysis, and remediation by summarising complex signals into actionable insights. This can significantly reduce mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), freeing analysts to focus on strategic threats rather than repetitive tasks.

5. Customisation and extensibility

Beyond the built-in agents, Microsoft also provides extensive developer tools and APIs so organisations can create custom agents or connect other systems securely specifically tailored to their environment. This means it is possible and configure Security Copilot to unique workflows, integrate with third-party systems, and align it with your specific compliance or operational needs.

Surface Management Portal is also included 🙂

Enablement

Depending on your organisation, you might qualify for funded workshops for awareness and enablement of Security Copilot. Speak to your Microsoft Partner to find out more.

Read more at Microsoft Learn:

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Sora-2 now in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Sora 2 - Copilot

At Ignite 2025 this month, amongst a long list of AI and Security updates, Microsoft announced that OpenAI’s Sora 2 text-to-video model is now integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot in their Create Agent bringing AI video into enterprise productivity.

Sora 2 can make content much more realistic than the previous version of Sora and has earned both praise and criticism, since AI-generated videos are quite a debated and controversial topic. Sora 2 also supports a “cameos” feature that creates the likeness of a person that can then be placed in content – again met with mixed opinions.

Sora 2 is available today (in the US) and rolling out to other regions, for Microsoft 365 Commercial users who are part of Microsoft’s Frontier program

What’s New with Sora 2

For those not familiar with Sora 2 the integration into Microsoft 365 Copilot (at no additonal cost) beings:

  • Improved realism and physics: Videos now follow motion dynamics more closely, from gymnastics routines to buoyancy on water.
  • Longer, coherent clips: Open AI’s Sora 2 can generate richer, more sustained video sequences than its predecessor.
  • Cameos feature: Users can insert likenesses (with consent) into videos, opening up new possibilities for training and storytelling.
  • Enterprise integration: Within Copilot’s Create experience, commercial users in the Frontier program can generate short clips, add voiceovers, music, and brand kit elements for consistency.

Whilst this may still feel like novality, it shows how far this is coming on and unleases new levels of quality allowing creators and marketiers to embedding video creation into the same environment where organisations already manage documents, presentations, and collaboration.

How to Access Sora-2 in Copilot

Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can create video project with Copilot (powered by the Sora-2). It can be used for video and voiceovers, leverage your organisation brand kit and then be editied to add music, and include other visual elements using ClipChamp.

Note: Today, your oganisation must be enrolled in the Copilot Frontier (early adopter programme)

Why It Matters for Microsoft 365 Customers

Microsoft positions Copilot as a multimodal hub, combining text, images, documents, audio, and now realistic video. For enterprises, this means:

  • Marketing teams can rapidly prototype campaign assets.
  • HR and L&D can produce onboarding explainers without outsourcing.
  • Anyone can create and enrich presentations with dynamic video narratives.

Since all this happens inside Microsoft 365, identity, compliance, and governance frameworks apply. That’s a major differentiator compared to consumer-first AI video tools and helps business further enable this level of creativity within risking corporate data leakage.

Video also coming to Copilot Notebooks

Along side this new feature, Microsoft are also bringing video into Copilot Notebooks. ALong with the already available audio podcast feature, Copilot Notebooks can now create enhances overview pages, proactive topic suggestions, and …wait for it, audio and video summaries and podcasts.

What’s Next?

Sora 2 in Copilot is more than a feature—it’s a signal of where enterprise communication is heading. Video will sit alongside slides, spreadsheets, and documents as a default medium. The organisations that thrive will be those that treat AI video not as a gimmick, but as a strategic lever for clarity, engagement, and impact.

Read Microsoft’s Official Post here:
Available today: OpenAI’s Sora 2 in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft Community Hub

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Microsoft 365 Copilot for small and medium businesses

Microsoft has just announced a much more affordable aka cheaper (but fully featured license) for small and medium businesses.

From December 1st, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business becomes available to organisations with fewer than 300 users. It’s priced at $21 per user/month, and can be added to organisations with  sBusiness Standard or Business Premium plans up to 300 seats.

This is $9 pupm than the enterprise version of M365 Copilot but with all the same features.

For a 300 users organisation that uses Microsoft 365 Copilot, this represents a $97,000 saving over 3 years.

What does Microsoft 365 Copilot Business include?

In short, it includes everything that is in Microsoft 365 Copilot and can be added to existing (or new) Microsoft Business licenses. It includes:

Microsoft Copilot options.
  • Copilot Chat across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Loop, and Teams
  • Copilot Search to surface insights from your own data
  • Copilot Pages for structured knowledge hubs
  • Work IQ, the intelligence layer that learns your context
  • Custom agents to automate workflows and tailor experiences

Enterprise Grade Security and Privacy

Just like the enterprise version, Copilot Business respects all existing security, privacy, and data boundaries.

Copilot Business Availability

This is available to purchase direct or via your Microsoft CSP partner from December 1st 2025.

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Windows 365: What, Where and Why?

As Windows 365 settles well into its forth year, there have been huge advancements in capability, connection methods, endpoint innovation, and licensing options – with even more expected as Microsoft Ignite approaches next week

In my role, I spend a lot of time talking with clients about Modern Work solutions and where Windows 365 fits within their organisation: how it can be adopted and leveraged for simplicity, security, governance, access & management, contractors, and frontline staff.

This blog walks through many of these themes in my own way, reflecting how we often describe them to clients when shaping strategy and deployment. 

So, what is Windows 365? Windows 365 is a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) that provides a new type of dedicated Windows virtual machine (Cloud PCs) for your end users. The Cloud PC lets users access their Windows desktop from various devices, including Windows, Web, iOS, and Android etc.

Ways to Connect to Windows 365

Microsoft now highlights three/four primary ways to connect to a Windows 365 Cloud PC: 

  • Via Web Browser (at https://windows365.microsoft.com) 
    • The fastest way to access and deploy, no installation required (and no plug-ins). 
    • Ideal for occasional access or unmanaged devices and even on home TV.
    • Works across platforms (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux) with no apps needed.
  • Remote Desktop App  (being deprecated)
    • Full-featured experience with richer integration. 
    • Supports multiple monitors, device redirection, and local resource access. 
    • Best suited for power users who need a seamless desktop feel. 
  • Windows App
    • Unified app for both Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. 
    • Modern interface, simplified management. 
    • Designed for organisations standardising on Microsoft’s evolving app ecosystem. 
  • Windows 365 Link 
    • Microsoft first purpose-built Cloud PC device. 
    • Boots directly to Windows 365 in seconds, with dual 4K monitor support and optimised video conferencing. 
    • Runs a locked-down OS withno local data, apps, or admin rights, reducing attack surface. 
    • Managed via Intune and Entra, with flexible deployment models (IT-driven or user-driven

Each method balances simplicity, performance, and integration differently. The right choice depends on your team’s workflows, devices, and IT governance model. Of course in some situations a mix may be used as per my use example below.

Key Use Cases and Scenarios

  • Contractors or Temporary Staff → Browser access for quick onboarding/offboarding. 
  • Field Workers and Mobile Teams → Remote Desktop app for resilience and performance. 
  • Developers and Power Users :Windows App or Remote Desktop for multi-monitor and GPU acceleration. 
  • Highly Regulated Industries :Browser or Windows 365 Link for locked-down compliance. 
  • Shared Workspaces and Hot‑desking: Windows 365 Link for instant sign‑in and simplified IT. 
  • IT Modernisation Projects: Windows App and Windows 365 Link for different and future‑proof endpoint strategy. 

Cost Optimisation for Frontline and Part‑Time Users

Licensing is just as important as the connection method. Here are ways to reduce costs without compromising experience: 

  • Windows 365 Frontline 
    • Tailored for shift workers, seasonal staff, and part‑time employees. 
    • Licenses are pooled—multiple users can share Cloud PCs across shifts. 
    • Automatic sign‑out ensures Cloud PCs aren’t left idle. 
    • Currently available with a 20% discount for new customers. 
  • Blended Licensing Strategy 
    • Use Enterprise licenses for full‑time staff needing persistent access. 
    • Use Frontline licenses for part‑time or occasional users. 
    • This mix maximises ROI and avoids over‑provisioning. 
  • Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC) 
    • Employees connect securely from their own devices. 
    • Reduces hardware spend—Forrester estimates ~$750 saved per contractor. 
  • Shared Cloud PCs 
    • Provision temporary desktops for contractors or seasonal staff. 
    • Can avoids the cost of dedicated, always‑on Cloud PCs. 
  • Flexible Provisioning 
    • Scale Cloud PCs up or down based on demand (e.g., retail peaks, healthcare shifts). 
    • Prevents wasted spend during quiet periods (remove license or scale down).

Let’s talk ROI….

A common question is naturally, “how can Windows 365 can offer better lower cost of ownership than a PC bearing in mind a device of some sort is needed to access Windows 365 from in the first place”.

So, and again this depends on the scenario, when you look at a 4‑year device lifecycle, Windows 365 can deliver a lower total cost of ownership than a traditional PC – especially in BYOPC or contractor scenarios. Even when the costs are similar, the added benefits in security, agility, and simplified IT management make the Cloud PC model more compelling. For frontline or part‑time staff, the savings are even greater thanks to pooled licensing.

The Forrester report (below) goes into this in more detail.

Strategic Considerations

Beyond user scenarios, IT leaders should weigh: 

  • Security posture: Browser and Link minimise local footprint, while apps offer richer policy enforcement. 
  • Device diversity: Mixed estates (BYOD, macOS, Linux) lean toward browser; standardised estates benefit from apps or Link. 
  • Future roadmap: The Windows App and Windows 365 Link are evolving rapidly—early adoption may simplify long-term management. 
  • Cost efficiency: Frontline licensing and BYOPC strategies can significantly reduce TCO. 

Sources

There are a bunch of great Microsoft and tech community sites that talk about these things in more detail.. I’ve included the URLs below as these go deep into many areas I have covered above.

Windows 365 – How to Choose the Best Connection Method for Your Team 

Windows 365 Link — The First Cloud PC Device 

Windows 365 Link – Deployment Planning, Setup and Enrollment 
   
Windows 365 Documentation (Microsoft Learn) 

Windows 365 Frontline (Official Microsoft Page) 

Forrester TEI Study — The Total Economic Impact of Windows 365 

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AI Explained: 9 Key Concepts You Need to Know in 2025

Artificial intelligence, whilst a phrase used in most of our daily lives, can feel huge, strange, unknown, scary, exciting and sometimes even intimidating. In this post I decided I would strip back the noise and waffle and share nine crisp, usable concepts. I’ve aimed to provide clarity over jargon and give some practical examples over theory.

Before I start, many and to put into familiar brands, here are a few AI tools and brands you will of already know or at least of have heard of:

1. Common AI Tools to know about

  • ChatGPT – What really started the world of “publicly accessible” Generative AI Chat Bots. ChatGPT (version 5 is the current) is a conversational AI that generates text, pictures, and even video. It can answer questions and help with creative writing. It’s a clear example of generative AI in action, showing how large language models can produce human‑like responses. Free and Paid versions.
  • Copilot (Microsoft) – leverages many different AI models including ChatGPT, Microsoft’s own and others, can do very what ChatGPT can do, but is also integrated across line of business apps and data like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Windows. Copilot acts as an AI agent that helps you create, draft, analyse, and even automate tasks. It’s a practical demonstration of how AI agents and retrieval techniques can boost productivity. Free tier (ChatGPT Pro equivalent) and Premium for Consumer/Family. Microsoft 365 Copilot for Business use.
  • Google Gemini – Google’s AI assistant that blends search with generative capabilities, pulling in live information to give context‑aware answers. Free and Paid tiers.
  • GitHub Copilot – A developer‑focused AI that suggests code snippets and functions in real time. It shows how reasoning models and pattern recognition can accelerate software development.
  • MidJourney / DALL·E – Image generation tools that turn text prompts into visuals. These highlight the creative side of AI, where models learn patterns from vast datasets and apply them to new artistic outputs.
  • Perplexity – Great for research including financial data and educational content. Has free and paid versions.
  • Siri / Alexa – typically home style voice assistants that act as simpler AI agents, interpreting commands and connecting to external systems like calendars, music apps, or smart home devices. Great for simple tasks like “what is weather like today” and for linking to smart home devices – “Alexa, turn on the porch light“.

If you are just starting (or are a beginner), the easiest way to decide which AI tool to use is to match the tool to the problem you’re trying to solve. If you need help writing or brainstorming, generative text tools like ChatGPT or Copilot in Word are ideal. If you’re working with numbers or data, Copilot in Excel can analyse and visualise patterns for you. For deeply creative projects, image generators like MidJourney or DALL·E turn ideas into visuals, while GitHub Copilot accelerates coding tasks. The key is not to chase every shiny new AI release, but to ask: what am I trying to achieve, and which tool is designed for that job? If you are starting out, start small, experiment with one or two tools in their daily workflow, and build confidence before expanding into more advanced applications.

Which AI in 5: Pick the AI tool that fits your task- writing, data, images, or code—and grow from there.

2. What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not really a product though word bingo might have people say ChatGPT or Copilot (at work), but it is far more than that! AI is a broad field of computer science focused on creating systems that can perform tasks which normally require human intelligence. These tasks include many things such as recognising speech, interpreting and understanding images and videos, making decisions, and even generating creative content such as music, videos and images. As of 2025, AI is already embedded in many aspects of our everyday lives – in work and in personal life – from recommendation engines on Netflix to fraud detection in banking, to summarising meetings at work.

At its core, AI combines data, algorithms, and computing power to simulate aspects of human cognition, but it does so at a scale and speed that humans could never achieve.

AI in 5: AI is machines learning, reasoning, and acting like humans.

3. AI Agents

Right, so an AI Agent is a system designed to act autonomously in pursuit of a goal. Unlike traditional software that follows rigid instructions, agents can perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions with or without constant human input.

For example, a customer service chatbot is an agent that listens to queries, interprets intent, and responds appropriately. More advanced agents can coordinate multiple tasks, such as scheduling meetings, analysing reports, or even controlling robots in manufacturing.

The key is autonomy: agents don’t just follow orders—they adapt to changing conditions.

AI Agents in 5: AI agents are digital helpers that think and act for you.

4. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

RAG is a technique that makes AI more reliable by combining generative models (or sub models) with external knowledge sources such as the Web or date from corporate SharePoint sites, email etc.

Instead of relying solely on what the AI model was trained on (which may be outdated or incomplete), RAG can retrieves relevant documents or data in (near) real time and integrates them into its response.

This is especially powerful in business contexts, where accuracy and timeliness are critical – for example, pulling the latest compliance rules or product specifications from an application or data repository, before answering a query. RAG bridges the gap between static training data and dynamic, real-world knowledge.

RAG in 5: RAG = AI that looks things up from multiple sources before answering.

5. Explainable AI (XAI)

One of the biggest challenges with AI is the “black box” problem. What I mean by that is that often do not know how AI arrived at its decisions or answer when instructed.

Explainable AI addresses this by making the reasoning process transparent and understandable to humans. For instance, if an AI is being used by a bank to determine if a customer should/can get a loan or not and that AI  model rejects the loan application, XAI will highlight / explain the factors such as credit history or income that influenced the decision.

In essence this is about seeing it’s workings out. If you have used Microsofts Researcher or Analyst agent at work, you will see some of this as it does its work.

This transparency is vital in ensuring we can trust AI and is required in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and law, where accountability and fairness are non-negotiable.

By opening this black box, XAI builds trust and ensures AI is used responsibly.

XAI in 5: XAI shows you why the AI answers the way it did, what information it used and how it made its choice.

6. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

While today’s AI is powerful, it is still considered “narrow AI” – specialised in specific tasks despite the advances we see every week.

Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is a (some say) theoretical future state where machines surpass human intelligence across every domain, from scientific discovery to emotional understanding.

Many might be thinking “The Terminator” here but in reality it is more than conceivable given the current pace of evolution that ASI could in design new technologies, solve global challenges, or even “create” beyond human imagination.

This naturally raises profound ethical and safety concerns: how do we ensure such intelligence aligns with human values and what happens if ASI becomes smarter than the humans that created it?

ASI remains speculative and there are many opinions and research on the matter, but today it is a concept that drives much of the debate around the long-term future of AI.

ASI in 5: ASI is the idea of AI being smarter than all humans in every way.

7. Reasoning Models

Traditional AI models excel at recognising patterns, but they often struggle with multi-step logic.

Reasoning models are designed to overcome this by simulating structured, logical thought processes. They can break down complex problems into smaller steps, evaluate different pathways, and arrive at conclusions in a way that mirrors human reasoning.

This makes them especially useful in domains like legal analysis, financial analysis, scientific research, or strategic planning, where answers are notjust about recognising patterns and finding information but about weighing evidence and making defensible decisions in a way similar to how we as humans might undertake such work.

Reasoning Models in 5: Reasoning models let AI think step by step like us.

8. Vector Databases

AI systems need efficient ways to store and retrieve information, and that’s where vector databases come in.

Unlike traditional databases that store data in rows and columns, vector databases store information as mathematical vectors – dense numerical representations that capture meaning and relationships.

This allows AI to perform semantic searches, finding results based on similarity of meaning rather than exact keywords. For example, if you search for “holiday by the sea,” a vector database could also return results for “beach vacation” because it understands the conceptual link.

Vector Databases in 5: Vector databases help AI find meaning, not just words.

9. Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Finally, MCP is a framework that helps AI agents connect seamlessly with external systems, APIs, and data sources. Instead of being limited to their own training data, agents using MCP can pull in live information, interact with business tools, and execute workflows across platforms. For example, an MCP-enabled agent could retrieve customer records from a CRM, analyse them, and then trigger a follow-up email campaign—all without human intervention.

MCP makes AI more versatile and practical in enterprise environments.

MCP in 5 : MCP is the bridge that connects AI to other tools.

What next and Getting Started

AI is not a single technology but a constellation of concepts – agents, RAG, XAI, ASI, reasoning models, vector databases, and MCP – that together define its capabilities and potential. Understanding these terms helps demystify AI and highlights both its current applications and future possibilities.

As AI continues to evolve, these building blocks will shape how businesses, governments, and individuals harness its power responsibly.

AI is a toolkit of ideas working together to change the world. When we look at what tool to use when, in reality there is not one better than the other it’s more about context of use, the platform you use it on, what your work provides, what you get included in your other software (for example Copilot in Windows, Office apps etc) and what task you are performing. Some AI’s are better at images, some at research and some at writing and analysis.

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