Microsoft Build 2025 is almost at an end. Microsoft’s annual developer conference might be aimed at software engineers and cloud devs, but realistically, there’s plenty in there to dig into even if you don’t work as a programmer. Unsurprisingly, the theme throughout the conference this year (and for some years previous now) has been AI.
In his opening keynote, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella highlighted the importance of AI and the company’s plan of “building the open, agentic web at scale.” The idea is to hand over the reins to Copilot and let the AI agents take over repetitive, costly tasks. Here are some of the most important announcements from this year’s Microsoft Build.
Windows File Explorer gets an AI-powered boost
By the sound of it, this is a tool we might all benefit from and not something strictly aimed at devs. Windows File Explorer will now receive something Microsoft refers to as “AI actions.”
Available in Windows 11, AI actions (or shortcuts, if you will) will let you right-click on a file of your choosing and use AI to get things done easier.
Some of the highlights here include the ability to get Copilot to summarize an Office document for you, right from the File Explorer menu. You can also erase unwanted objects from photos, again, thanks to AI, or blur or remove the background with Paint (via Copilot, that is).
As reported by The Verge, there might be more coming than what Microsoft specifically spoke about; four new image-related AI actions are currently in the Dev Channel builds of Windows 11. This includes the ability to find similar images on the web with the help of Bing.
GitHub gets an AI coding agent
The big announcement here is that GitHub Copilot will now be available to all Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ users, but also that Copilot’s coding agent will save devs a lot of time — which could reduce the time it takes for new features to come out and be available to us all.
Although many developers aren’t huge fans of the use of AI in their daily work, many others find the benefits in automating simpler tasks, which frees them up to work on more complex code. For the latter, Microsoft has just introduced a new coding agent, now available on GitHub.
The agent was made to help programmers with one of the most annoying parts of their jobs — bug fixes. It’ll also take care of adding features and refactoring code. “GitHub continues to be the home for developers. […] We’re doubling down for developers building any applications. Trust, security, compliance, auditability, data residency are even more critical today. Open-source is at the core of GitHub, and we’re taking this next big step,” said Nadella.
You can now translate PDFs directly in Edge
If you deal with a lot of PDFs, you’ll love this one: You’ll soon be able to translate them directly in the Microsoft Edge browser. Simply clicking “translate” in the address bar will let you leverage AI to translate the entire document into one of over 70 languages supplied by Microsoft.
This appears to only be a feature in Edge for Business, though. Right now, it’s rolling out to Windows Canary users and is said to be available next month.
Microsoft 365 gets a major AI boost with new agents
As reported by PCMag, the new update to Copilot is said to be huge. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself referred to it as the biggest update since the launch of Teams — and whether you love it or not, it’s hard to deny that Teams turned out to be a pretty big thing worldwide.
Copilot’s current arsenal of AI-powered goodies includes Chat, which is essentially Microsoft’s version of ChatGPT. Search lets Copilot dig through your files and help you find what you’re asking for. The results of both those tools can be summarized in Notebook. Of course, you can also generate images, PowerPoints, and videos with Create.
Microsoft is now taking AI a few steps further by adding Agents. Agentic AI is a big topic these days, so it’s not a surprise to see Microsoft jumping on the bandwagon. Microsoft’s AI agents now include Researcher and Analyst.
Researcher relies on deep reasoning to help you create comprehensive reports. Copilot’s Researcher will be able to search the web and your own files, giving it a solid overview of various sources. Analyst fills in the gaps by being able to analyze data, including massive spreadsheets, to help you analyze (well, duh) various data points and draw accurate comparisons.
Although exciting, these new AI agents will be available to large enterprises. The company needs to be included in Microsoft’s Frontier program to benefit. Perhaps with time, Microsoft will bring AI agents to Copilot at large.
AI, AI everywhere
At this point, no one is surprised when an event such as Microsoft Build focuses solely on the use of AI. Many hoped to hear more about things like the Xbox handheld, but alas, that did not happen.
A lot of the new features and improvements announced during Build weren’t consumer-centric, but I recommend watching the full video if you’re curious about what else is new. Remember to also check out our Best of Computex 2025 roundup to give you a better overview of the exciting tech that made a debut in the last week.
