Microsoft is expanding its AI lineup with the launch of Microsoft Scout, the first product in what the company is calling a new category of AI agents called Autopilots, always-on agents that work independently on behalf of users throughout the workday.

Unlike traditional AI assistants that respond only when asked, Scout stays active in the background, continuously monitoring workflows, chats, emails, calendars, and files to take action proactively.

Autopilots are a new class of AI agents built to operate with their own identity and act autonomously within boundaries set by users and organizations. Rather than waiting for a prompt, they continuously track priorities and carry out tasks, even when the user's attention is elsewhere.

Microsoft Scout is the first Autopilot agent, and it is deeply integrated across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, including Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Users interact with Scout primarily through Teams, while a desktop app extends its reach to local resources, browsers, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

Scout is designed to reduce the coordination overhead that accumulates throughout a typical workday. Key capabilities include:

Automated scheduling — Scout proactively coordinates meeting times across time zones, flags important upcoming meetings, and prepares briefing materials.

Calendar blocking — It identifies upcoming deadlines and automatically reserves time to help users stay on track.

Risk detection — Scout monitors for stalled decisions and other potential blockers, surfacing them before they escalate.

Contextual learning — Over time, Scout builds a profile of how a user works through a feature called Work IQ, becoming more relevant and aligned to individual priorities.

Microsoft has positioned Scout as enterprise-ready from day one, emphasizing security controls built around Microsoft's existing identity and compliance infrastructure.

Each Scout agent operates under a dedicated Microsoft Entra identity, not a shared or anonymous service account, making its actions attributable and auditable. Credentials are scoped to specific tasks, redacted from logs, and managed with the same standards applied to other first-party Microsoft services.

Access controls ensure Scout can only reach resources and destinations that have been explicitly approved. Sensitive actions can be configured to require human sign-off before execution. Microsoft Purview data protection policies, including sensitivity labels and data loss prevention (DLP), are enforced in real time before Scout sends or writes anything.

Scout is powered by OpenClaw, an open-source technology framework. Microsoft is contributing policy conformance capabilities back to the OpenClaw project, enabling organizations running OpenClaw independently to validate their security and compliance configuration and generate audit-ready reports, or so Microsoft claims.

Microsoft employees have been testing an early Scout experience internally. Microsoft is now extending access to a select group of customers through private preview and to organizations enrolled in the Frontier program.

Frontier enrollment

Intune policy configuration

An opt-in attestation

Users with an active GitHub Copilot license can then download and install the Scout desktop experience.

Microsoft has not yet announced general availability dates or if there will be pricing beyond the Frontier program.