Microsoft on June 2 introduced Microsoft Scout, an always-on AI agent that can act autonomously on behalf of users across Microsoft 365 applications, marking the company’s entry into a new category of agents it calls Autopilots.
Omar Shahine, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Scout, said Autopilots are “always-on agents that work autonomously, with their own identity, and act on your behalf.”
Unlike traditional AI assistants that respond to prompts, Scout remains active in the background and can take actions across workplace applications based on user priorities and organisational policies.
The company said an early version of Scout has already been used internally by Microsoft employees. It is now being extended to a select group of customers through a private preview program and made available experimentally through Microsoft’s Frontier initiative.
Access to Scout requires Frontier enrollment, Intune policy configuration, and an opt-in attestation. Users with a GitHub Copilot license can then download and install the experience, Microsoft said.
Microsoft Scout is integrated with Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint. It can access workplace data such as chats, emails, calendars, and contacts, while users interact with the agent primarily through Teams. The company said Scout can also connect to browsers, local resources, and model context protocol servers through its desktop application.
According to Microsoft, Scout is built to reduce routine coordination work by scheduling meetings across time zones, identifying important upcoming meetings, preparing briefing materials, and blocking calendar time for approaching deadlines. The agent can also flag risks such as stalled decisions and monitor ongoing work without requiring repeated prompts.
“Microsoft Scout reduces the coordination work that builds throughout the day,” Shahine said. “It can proactively schedule and coordinate meeting times across time zones, flag important meetings, and generate the materials you need to prepare while keeping you in the loop.”
The system is powered by Work IQ, a framework that Microsoft said helps the agent learn how users work, what they prioritise, and which tasks require attention. “Work IQ carries work forward, becoming more useful, relevant, and aligned to your priorities,” Shahine said.
Microsoft said Scout is built on OpenClaw, an open-source technology project, and that the company is contributing policy conformance capabilities back to the project.
Organisations using OpenClaw will be able to verify whether their environments meet security and compliance requirements and obtain audit-ready validation, Microsoft said.
To address enterprise governance requirements, Microsoft said each Scout agent operates under its own governed Microsoft Entra identity rather than a shared service account. The company added that credentials are scoped to specific tasks, protected from logs and diagnostics, and managed under the same controls used for Microsoft services.
Microsoft also said Scout operates within existing organisational controls, including access permissions, approval workflows for sensitive actions, and data protection policies enforced through Microsoft Purview.
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