Microsoft AI Weekly #8: Copilot, GitHub, Azure AI & more

👋 Hi, here’s this week’s roundup of Microsoft AI news!

This week MCP is firmly in the spotlight. From connecting agents to tools and building interactive MCP apps, to enterprise-ready Foundry Toolboxes, MCP security, and the latest developments across the ecosystem, the protocol is quickly becoming a key piece of the agentic AI stack.

Add smarter Copilot experiences, AI-native development, and new ways to build, evaluate, and secure agents, and there’s a lot to catch up on this week.

Enjoy!

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⚡️ Microsoft

The latest from Microsoft on AI.

💼 Productivity & Work

• SharePoint AI page authoring: Select, describe, and refine • Sara Cummings

• What’s New in Copilot in SharePoint: September 2026 • Julie Seto

• Enterprise app development inside Copilot Cowork • Microsoft Power Platform

👩‍💻 Coding & Developer Tools

• GitHub Copilot app for Beginners: Using the diff, terminal, and browser • Kayla Cinnamon

• Marketing ops as code: Automating events from planning to follow-up on GitHub • Tomoko Tanaka

• Your work might not need the smartest model • Waldek Mastykarz

• Bring Your Own AI Models to GitHub Copilot in VS Code • Visual Studio Code

• How does Aspire make Copilot more efficient when I’m building an app? • Microsoft Developer and Maddy Montaquila

• The Future of Visual Studio: Interactive Expert Panel • Mads Kristensen, Anson Horton and Andy Sterland

🐙 GitHub Changelog

• Add VS Code Agents to Copilot usage metrics

• Auto-resolution and analysis updates in Copilot code review

• GitHub Copilot weekly releases

• MAI-Code-1-Flash deprecated

• Enterprise managed permissions for GitHub Copilot agent operations

• Remediate Code Quality findings with agentic autofix

• AI Scan for pull request APIs in public preview

🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform

• Announcing Azure AI Speech LLM 2607: Better Multilingual Accuracy, Easier Customization • Rena Liu

• Beyond the benchmark: How an adaptive approach drives scientific discovery • Aseem Datar

• From alerts to action: How AI agents are reshaping network operations at Microsoft • Alex Fleck

• The Economics of Agent Optimization: How AI agent governance controls cost and proves ROI • Steve Sweetman

• What’s new in Microsoft Foundry • Nick Brady

• A unified MCP layer with Toolboxes in Microsoft Foundry • Microsoft Developer and Viswajeet Balaji

• Building MCP servers with VS Code • Microsoft Developer and Harald Kirschner

• Event-driven agents, powered by MCP • Microsoft Developer and Clare Liguori

• MCP Live! - The whole event • Visual Studio Code

• MCP: Server, Client & Protocol at GitHub • Microsoft Developer and Sam Morrow

• MCP: The Standard Every AI Tool Speaks • Microsoft Visual Studio

• State of MCP • Microsoft Developer and Caitie McCaffrey

• When chatbots grow buttons: Building MCP apps with FastMCP • Microsoft Developer and Jeremiah Lowin

• You don’t need code to build your first AI agent • Microsoft Developer and Amy Boyd

🛡️ Security, Governance & Admin

• Evolution of MCP auth • Microsoft Developer and Den Delimarsky

🎨 Copilot Studio

• Copilot Studio | Product Weeks • Microsoft Power Platform

📆 Upcoming Events

• Fly with Copilot Is Landing in Redmond • Microsoft Developer

• Get ready for PPCC26 with Sheila Shahpari! • Microsoft Power Platform

👥 Message Center

• RM472031 - Data Loss Prevention- DLP Policy Change Insights with Security Copilot

• RM487852 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Realtime voice interactions in Word and PowerPoint

• RM499153 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Enhanced personalization with memory in Copilot

• RM522616 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Ask Copilot about highlighted response content

• RM542181 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Edit with Copilot in Excel (Web, Win32, Mac)

• RM547749 - Microsoft Viva: Copilot Analytics - Export metrics in the Copilot Dashboard at Day Level

• RM550513 - Microsoft Clipchamp: Upgraded music selection for Copilot AI Videos

• RM553224 - Microsoft Viva: Copilot Enhanced Topic Assignment

• RM557560 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): AI Generated video drafts include text animations and new layout options

• RM560396 - Microsoft Purview: Endpoint Data Loss Prevention - Expand protection to Copilot + PC devices for Recall snapshots through custom policies

• RM562353 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Session and Response Sharing in M365 Copilot

• RM564605 - Outlook: Co-Authoring Highlight and Rewrite

• RM566870 - OneNote: Suggested Artifact Creation in Copilot Notebooks

• RM567005 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Insights: Copilot Analytics - Cowork adoption and impact

• RM567008 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): New Rich Answer Cards

• RM567671 - Planner: Planner Agent chat in Basic Plans

• RM567895 - OneNote: Multimodal capture in Copilot Notebooks (Android)

• RM570277 - Word: Copilot edit mode is available to users in Office 365 GCC

• RM570469 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft M365): Copilot Chat can now better match search results from text that appears inside images embedded in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file

• RM570845 - Microsoft Purview: Data Loss Prevention for Microsoft Cowork

• RM570847 - Microsoft Viva: Copilot Analytics - Agent value insights in Agent 365 Dashboard

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🌍 From the community

Hand-picked from MVPs and AI subject-matter experts around the globe.

🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform

• Adding Validation and Eval Gates to CI with WIQD • Sébastien Levert

• Build Smarter Declarative Agents with Skills and WIQD • Sébastien Levert

• Generating Evals with WIQD: Setting a Quality Bar That Holds • Sébastien Levert

🛡️ Security, Governance & Admin

• PyRIT: Democratizing AI red teaming through open-source tooling • Richard Lundeen and Roman Lutz

• From CopilotActivity to Actionable Alerts: Detecting Microsoft 365 Copilot Threats with Microsoft Sentinel • David Alonso Dominguez

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🪃 Acknowledgement of Country

MSAI.ms is written between Melbourne and Dubai. Part of this work is created on Wurundjeri land, and we acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.