Microsoft on Wednesday raised “frontier transformation” as a topic at its AI Tour Seoul event, describing it as embedding AI as a growth engine beyond productivity gains. It highlighted Copilot plus agents as technologies that can make frontier transformation a reality.

Microsoft recently unveiled 365 Copilot Wave 3. The key to the update was a shift from AI as a simple conversation partner to AI executing tasks directly inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. In other words, AI moved beyond an auxiliary function and was embedded directly as an agent in existing work apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Through this, Copilot can write, edit and proofread content inside documents, spreadsheets, presentations or emails in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

A key function related to this is “Copilot Cowork,” developed based on Anthropic Claude Cowork.

Claude Cowork supports even people who do not know how to code by enabling them to develop work automation tools through Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding tool. Copilot Cowork is a case optimised for the Microsoft platform environment.

At the AI Tour Seoul event, Seth Patton (세스 패튼), general manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Jason Gregory (제이슨 그레고리), director of product marketing, showed through live demonstrations what kind of experience Copilot plus agents offer for becoming a frontier company.

According to the two, Copilot Cowork breaks down complex requests into multiple steps and works within a context spanning relevant files, meetings and conversations.

It moves beyond a simple prompt-and-response approach and can handle long-running tasks that take minutes or hours. Progress can be monitored in real time, and users can revise or stop work midway if needed.

Microsoft also emphasised a multi-model strategy.

Patton said, “Microsoft 365 Copilot supports OpenAI models and Anthropic Claude, and even if users do not select a model themselves, Copilot automatically applies a model suited to the nature of the task. If they want, they can also choose a model directly.” Gregory demonstrated switching models inside Excel and automatically extracting spending figures from a marketing document to analyse financial scenarios.

Patton said, “Because all work happens within existing apps, it is easy to review changes and roll them back. It understands the user’s work context, so edits always reflect the latest information and relevance across files, meetings, chats and relationships overall.”

In addition to AI agents being deployed in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it also became easier to use business applications within the Copilot chat window. When a user starts a conversation, Copilot directly creates documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or handles tasks such as coordinating meeting schedules and sending emails without switching to separate apps. External apps such as Adobe, Monday.com and Figma can also be linked directly inside the chat window.

Microsoft unveiled an integrated intelligence layer for agentic AI called “IQ” to help Copilot cover various tasks in a more context-appropriate way. IQ consists of three parts: Work IQ, Fabric IQ and Foundry IQ.

Work IQ combines data such as emails, chats and files with work habits, workflow memory and reasoning functions. It connects to organisational and personal data in SharePoint files, Outlook emails and Teams meetings, and builds personalised memory based on user preferences and habits.

An “agent mode” was introduced in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so that when users give instructions, AI carries out multi-step tasks in order on its own. It is a sharply different approach from the past, when users had to execute tasks one by one in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Fabric IQ is an integrated semantic intelligence layer for the entire Microsoft Fabric data platform. It defines key concepts such as customers, products, sales and regions and their interrelationships to create a common business language. AI agents read data based on this, so they can answer on the same basis regardless of which department or system asks, the company explained.

Foundry IQ goes beyond simple document search, operating in an active way that plans queries, performs iterative searches, reviews results and then synthesises answers. It provides indexing and federated knowledge source access, a smart search engine, and enterprise-level security and governance functions.

Microsoft also unveiled “Agent 365” to address management issues that arise when operating AI in enterprise environments. Microsoft also introduced “Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Suite,” which bundles all functions into one.