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Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI counters with two cheaper GPT-6 models

Despite rampant worries about runaway artificial intelligence, the two big AI model makers aren’t yet slowing down: Anthropic PBC released Claude Opus 5.5 today and cut its price 20%, and minutes later OpenAI Group PBC put out two new GPT-6 models, Sol and Luna, at half what their predecessors cost.

OpenAI halved the price of both new models against the GPT-5.6 versions that carried the same names, bringing Sol to $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output. Luna sits an order of magnitude below that, at 10 cents and 50 cents.
Sol and Luna were built on much the same training methods as GPT-6 Astra, which the company began rolling out Sept. 3, then tuned for cost. Luna is the cheaper of the pair, pointed at high-volume routine jobs such as summarization and extraction. Sol takes on recurring coding and agent work. Astra for Law, a configuration built for legal research
The OpenAI models are live for developers as gpt-6-sol and gpt-6-luna, and in ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu subscribers. Free and Go users get Luna in the desktop app, and neither model has reached the main ChatGPT chat surface yet.

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# OpenAI # GPT-6 Astra # Sol and Luna # GPT-6 models

SharePoint gets smarter with new Copilot context editing

SharePoint is continuing its AI-focused overhaul, with Microsoft rolling out new Copilot tools that let users select specific page content and tell the AI exactly what they want to change.
SharePoint Copilot can now work with selected content
The biggest change is a new context selection feature that lets SharePoint authors highlight specific content and reference it directly when prompting Copilot.
Previously, users had to describe both what they wanted to change and where that content appeared on the page. With context selection, they can point Copilot directly at a specific section, image, text block, or other page element.
The new SharePoint Copilot tools are rolling out worldwide
Microsoft is gradually rolling out the new functionality to Microsoft 365 customers worldwide.
Organizations need Copilot in SharePoint enabled, while individual authors must have edit permissions for the pages they want to modify.
The update comes as Microsoft continues expanding Copilot across Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 Copilot can now build entire apps from simple prompts, while Domain Exclusion is rolling out in Copilot again.

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# Microsoft # SharePoint # Microsoft 365 # Copilot

Introducing Azure Multicloud Interconnect for AWS

Today, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are taking an important step toward simplifying that experience.
Microsoft Azure and AWS are excited to collaborate on a multicloud networking solution that uses both AWS Interconnect – multicloud and Azure Multicloud Interconnect for network interoperability, enabling customers to establish a private, high-performance private connectivity between Microsoft Azure and AWS through a streamlined, cloud-native experience.
This collaboration is built using the Open API specifications for network interoperability. Azure Multicloud Interconnect helps remove much of the complexity traditionally associated with multicloud networking. Customers can provision connectivity through an integrated experience while benefiting from enterprise-grade performance, resiliency, security, and operational simplicity.
Simplifying multicloud connectivity
Until now, organizations connecting Azure and AWS environments required careful planning, physical connectivity, routing configuration, provisioning coordination, monitoring, and lifecycle management to assemble and maintain multiple components across providers.

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# Microsoft Azure # Azure # Azure Multicloud # Web Services

GPT-6 Astra: Frontier intelligence for work, now generally available in Microsoft Foundry

The next era of enterprise AI will not be defined by chat experiences. It will be defined by how well a model can work for and with you. GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s newest frontier model, is now generally available for all customers in Microsoft Foundry. It is designed to help organizations make decisions for complex work and execute across the applications and systems where your business operates.
AI initiatives often slow down on identity, networking, governance, data handling, evaluation, and compliance. Microsoft Foundry brings these fundamentals together in Azure, helping teams move from experimentation to production with speed and trust.
For enterprises, this shifts AI from conversational assistance toward delivering more substantial units of work:

• Deliberate planning and decision support. Astra can break a challenge into steps, evaluate options, communicate its recommendation, and identify the next actions for review.
• Polished, purposeful output. Astra can apply context, templates, and quality standards throughout a workflow, helping produce documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and analyses that are ready for review.
• Ex*****on across applications. With advanced tool use and computer use, Astra can interact with software on a person’s behalf, move between apps, and complete multi-step tasks with appropriate human oversight.

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# Microsoft # Azure # GPT-6 Astra # AI Agents

Microsoft Gives Azure Copilot Direct Access to Specialized AI Agents
Microsoft has added direct agent access to Azure Copilot, giving cloud administrators more control over which specialized AI agent handles an infrastructure task.
A new agent picker in the Azure portal lets users select agents directly rather than first describing a task and allowing Copilot to determine which capability to invoke. Microsoft is initially exposing agents focused on areas including migration, deployment and optimization, with each designed around a particular Azure operational workflow.
The change gives administrators two ways to work with Azure's agentic capabilities. Users can continue interacting with Copilot as a general interface that routes requests to appropriate agents, or explicitly choose an agent when they already know the type of work they want performed.
For enterprise IT teams, direct selection could make agentic cloud management more predictable. Specialized agents can incorporate task-specific tools and context rather than requiring one general-purpose assistant to handle every infrastructure operation.

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# Microsoft # Azure # Azure Copilot # AI Agents

Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork Now Generally Available, Bringing Agentic AI to Microsoft 365 at Scale

Microsoft is taking its most ambitious Copilot experience mainstream: Copilot Cowork is now generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers worldwide. The agentic AI system is designed to run complex, long running, multi tool tasks from start to finish, returning completed work rather than just drafts or suggestions.

Microsoft highlights real-world scenarios where teams used Cowork to safely automate batch‑job spreadsheet edits, compare thousands of files across product versions, and revive stalled sales pipelines by ranking at‑risk opportunities with tailored follow-up actions. The company calls Cowork the fastest-growing feature in Frontier history, with some of the highest user satisfaction scores across any Copilot or agent experience so far.

What makes Copilot Cowork different:
Copilot Cowork is pitched as an “agentic” system: instead of answering a single prompt and stopping, it can orchestrate multiple tools, reason over large sets of data, and keep running in the background until a task is complete. You define the outcome—such as auditing a set of documents or building a report—and Cowork handles the end-to-end workflow.

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# Microsoft # Microsoft’s Copilot # Copilot Cowork

Latest Updates and News on Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure continues to innovate and expand its cloud services, offering new features and updates to enhance user experience and capabilities. Here are some of the latest highlights:
• Azure AI Foundry and Intelligent Data
At Microsoft Ignite, significant updates were introduced across Azure's cloud and AI infrastructure. These updates aim to scale AI transformation with a powerful, secure, and adaptive cloud infrastructure.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Enhancements
Several updates have been made to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS):
• Network Isolated Clusters: Simplifies the process of restricting network access and reduces the risk of unintentional exposure of the cluster's public endpoints.
• Parallel Image Pulls: AKS now defaults to parallel image pulls starting with version 1.31, enhancing overall system efficiency.
• Vaulted Backup: Azure Backup now supports vaulted backups for AKS, enabling cross-region disaster recovery, long-term retention, and immutable security.
•

These updates reflect Microsoft's commitment to providing robust, secure, and innovative cloud solutions to meet the evolving needs of its users. Stay informed about the latest developments by subscribing to Azure updates and exploring the Microsoft Azure Blog.
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# Microsoft # Microsoft Azure # Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

GPT‑5.6 is generally available in Microsoft Foundry
AI only creates value when it shows up in real systems—systems that are reliable, observable, and aligned to business outcomes.
Why Foundry is the best agent platform
Microsoft Foundry is Microsoft’s end-to-end platform for building, running, governing, and distributing AI agents. Foundry brings together the capabilities organizations need to move agents into production across three pillars:
• Build: Open and flexible across models and frameworks.
• Generate: Connected to enterprise data, tools, and users.
• Govern: Secured, managed, and optimized for long-term value.
Today, we’re making OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 series generally available in Microsoft Foundry Models and Microsoft Foundry Agent Service:
• GPT-5.6 Sol delivers the most advanced reasoning capabilities yet, supporting extended reasoning, agentic workflows, and code-focused scenarios, for the most demanding enterprise workloads.
• GPT-5.6 Terra is a balanced model for everyday work, delivering performance competitive with GPT-5.5 at a lower cost, making it ideal for scaling intelligent applications across the enterprise.
• GPT-5.6 Luna is the fastest and most affordable model in the family, making it well suited to high-volume, latency-sensitive workloads.

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# ChatGPT # Microsoft Foundry # Microsoft 365 Copilot # Copilot Apps2026

Microsoft is merging Copilot and Copilot 365 into one unified app - and retiring 3 features

• Microsoft is merging Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot into one unified app.
• You'll be able to sign into Copilot with a personal, work, or school account.
• This will reduce the clutter and confusion of juggling two separate apps.
Microsoft currently offers two different Copilot apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and even the web. The regular Copilot app is aimed at consumers and individual users. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is designed for organizations and professional accounts.
How to keep your conversations with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude as private as possible
Scheduled to begin rolling out in mid-September, the new unified Copilot app will be Microsoft's attempt to blend the two separate but similar experiences. With that goal in mind, the new single app will let you sign in with your work, school, or personal account. You'll then be able to connect to your email, calendar, and cloud-based services, whether at home or at work.

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# ChatGPT # Microsoft 365 # Microsoft 365 Copilot # Copilot Apps2026

Podcasts, Deep Research, and Group Chat Retire on August 20, 2026

The consolidation comes with a feature cull. Microsoft is retiring Podcasts from Copilot, ending the ability to create or access them after August 18, 2026, though users can download individual episodes from their podcast library before then. Deep Research, the consumer app’s detailed report-generation feature, is also being retired starting August 18, 2026. Group Chat threads, messages, and content, including images generated inside group chats, will not be carried forward after that date, and Microsoft advises users to copy anything they want to keep into a document or notes app beforehand.
Some features that survive the transition may still be interrupted during it: the company cautions that capabilities such as Shopping and Copilot Health may be temporarily unavailable, or show functionality gaps, while the new version rolls out.
On pricing, the core experience stays free. Chatting, image creation, and file uploads remain available at no cost subject to capacity and usage limits, and users who hit a limit can either wait or upgrade. Higher usage limits, access to agents, and complex multi-step tasks sit behind a Microsoft 365 subscription.

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# Microsoft 365 # Copilot Apps2026