Microsoft Office becomes Microsoft 365 Copilot app in confusing rebrand pushing AI integration

Microsoft Office has been rebranded to Microsoft 365 Copilot, or has it?

Microsoft's central app is for files, scanning, editing, and interacting with AI There's a whole lot of confusion surrounding Microsoft's supposed rebrand of Microsoft Office - with some users noticing a new message on the Office.com website. This message states; "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot." This is a change from the previous name, 'Microsoft Office', but this change happened in 2022. The change was implemented to push consumers into using the Microsoft 365 Copilot app which, for the last year has been used as an access point for the Office apps alongside Copilot. It's likely that these changes have caused confusion because of Microsoft's extended efforts to push Copilot onto its customers, whether they like it or not. The change (whenever it happened), has prompted concern amongst users and critics, who are worried this may not only cause some confusion but also end the Office name, which has become an industry-agnostic icon (as evidenced by its $30+ billion quarterly revenue). This means that apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be accessed through the M365 Copilot app. But - it also marks an even bigger push for generative AI tools. For example, Office.com now redirects to a new M365 page, which offers subscriptions for Redmond's popular Office apps with Copilot subscriptions included by default. The rebrand confusion has also coincided with recent price hikes, adding to customer frustration. Microsoft's central M365 Copilot app is being marketed as an all-in-one productivity suite, which can be used for accessing files, scanning documents, editing work, and interacting with Copilot. Markets that don't currently have access to Copilot will make do without the Copilot tab in the app, but the Microsoft 365 Copilot name and icon will remain for branding consistency. Non-paying customers will also be restricted from accessing Copilot's AI features. The app is different from the Copilot app, which is the native way to interact with Redmond's AI chatbot. Office's rebrand also served as the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to start using its new domains - pages previously under the office.com and microoft365.com domains are now redirected to m365.cloud.microsoft. Following CEO Satya Nadella's recent plea for people to stop concerning themselves with AI slop and to focus on the tech's meaningful impacts, the term 'Microslop' was coined. One that has also been used in response to the renamed app being pushed on users, regardless of their AI needs.

In a truly galaxy-brained rebrand, Microsoft Office is now the 'Microsoft 365 Copilot app,' but Copilot is also still the name of the AI assistant

Copilot is the app for launching the other apps, but it's also a chatbot inside the apps. Any questions? About a decade ago, hardware company Corsair attempted to pivot from its classic logo -- a subtle trio of ship sails -- to a newer, edgier look, a pair of crossed swords that gave off regrettable '2000s tribal tattoo' energy. The rebrand didn't last long: after a fierce outcry from people who correctly thought the new logo sucked, Corsair swapped to a refreshed take on the sail logo, which it's been using ever since. Corsair was established in 1994, and made about $1.4 billion last year -- which I bring up because today Microsoft, a slightly bigger company, has slipped on its own rebranding banana peel. The company is seemingly all but ditching the Office name -- which it introduced four years before Corsair existed, and which drove more than $30 billion in revenue just last quarter -- with a catchy new name: "Microsoft 365 Copilot app." Copilot is, notably, a thing that already exists! But as part of the ongoing effort to juice AI assistant usage numbers by making it impossible to not use AI, Microsoft has decided to just call its whole productivity software suite Copilot, I guess. The company had already downplayed the Office name, despite it being perhaps the most universally recognized software in existence, by renaming its cloud version of Word, Powerpoint, etc. Office 365 in 2010, then Microsoft 365 in 2017. Now when you want to open up a Word document, you can get to them by launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Intuitive! As spotted by Bluesky user DodgerFanLA, going to Office.com now greets you with the following helpful explainer: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.*" Never has an asterisk been more relevant to me than following the words "your favorite apps now including Copilot." I don't really understand why Copilot should be the name for both a specific tool and the container for a whole suite of apps. Perhaps the implication is that with "Copilot Chat that supercharges productivity," the individual bits of software are barely relevant anymore, when you can simply ask the chatbot to do the work for you! At least team Xbox can breathe a sigh of relief: the company has come up with a naming scheme worse than both "Xbox Series X" and "Xbox Game Pass for PC." Should Microsoft just go ahead and rebrand Windows, the only piece of its arsenal more famous than Office, as Copilot, too? I do actually think we're not far off from that happening. Facebook rebranded itself "Meta" when it thought the metaverse would be the next big thing, so it seems just as plausible that Microsoft could name the next version of Windows something like "Windows with Copilot" or just "Windows AI." I expect a lot of confusion around whatever Office is called now, and plenty more people laughing at how predictably silly this all is. But will anyone actually get mad about it, the way they did the Corsair logo? Probably not. Office may have been around for 35 years and make hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but the difference is Corsair makes stuff that people actually like to use.