Post Content Copilot usage patterns from Microsoft’s 2025 report show health dominating mobile chats at all hours, while work-related queries peak on desktops. (Image: Microsoft)
Microsoft is reportedly looking to ride the OpenClaw wave by introducing similar agentic AI features in its Copilot AI assistant.
The integration of OpenClaw-style features in Copilot is said to be part of Microsoft’s broader efforts to transform its 365 Copilot suite into a system that can “run autonomously around the clock” and complete tasks on behalf of users, according to a report by The Information.
With these always-on upgrades, users will be able to make the Copilot AI assistant do things such as scan their Outlook inbox and calendar, and serve up a list of suggested tasks each day. In addition, Microsoft is looking to develop OpenClaw-like agents tailored to certain roles in fields such as marketing, sales, and accounting.
These sector-specific agents are likely to be aimed at Microsoft’s enterprise customers by limiting the user approvals required for each agent and isolating them from other parts of an organisation. Microsoft is set to showcase some of these OpenClaw-style features during its upcoming Build conference that is scheduled to take place from June 2, 2026, onwards, as per the report.
In the past few years, Microsoft has rolled out a wide range of Copilot-branded AI products that power various capabilities in its software and services, like summarisations in Microsoft Outlook and transcriptions in Microsoft Teams. Recently, however, the company has been scaling back the expansion of Copilot within its products to focus on “integrating AI where it’s most meaningful,” as Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and Devices, wrote in a blog post last month.
Microsoft “exploring the potential of technologies like OpenClaw in an enterprise context,” Omar Shahine, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, was quoted as saying.
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Copilot’s positioning as productivity-boosting AI for enterprises is backed by several key integrations such as the rollout of Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot within Microsoft 365 services, and making Claude Cowork accessible within Copilot to enable users to handle longer, multi-step tasks more efficiently. Last week, Anthropic announced the beta version of Claude for Word which lets users ask questions about their documents and receive AI-generated answers with clickable section citations.
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OpenClaw is an open-source platform that lets users create AI-powered agents or ‘claws’ that run locally on a user’s device. While the platform has seen a surge in popularity since the start of the year, the requisite of giving OpenClaw access to all of a user’s data and systems in order for it to work as a true personal assistant, has further sparked concerns that these agents can go rogue and tamper with or delete valuable files.
Also Read | Why OpenClaw is attracting even 60-year-olds in China
These security tradeoffs have led to a rise in safety-focused forks and alternatives to OpenClaw. Last month, Nvidia debuted NemoClaw, its software toolkit for easily setting up and installing OpenClaw with some security controls. Microsoft, on the other hand, is confident that it can implement “safer” versions of OpenClaw, as per the report.
