When I ask the company for more specifics, though, Microsoft touts its early success in deploying AI internally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to really look at where there\u2019s developer toil, where we have inefficiencies,\u201d says Amanda Silver, a CVP in Microsoft\u2019s CoreAI team who leads product for the company\u2019s Apps & Agents platform, in an interview with Notepad. \u201cPart of what we\u2019re looking at is both how we can apply [AI] and where we can apply it.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are over 100,000 code repositories inside Microsoft, from brand new projects to legacy codebases that are more than 20 years old and still up and running. \u201cWe have pretty much every programming language, architecture, and lifecycle stage that you can imagine, and this really reflects a lot of our customers,\u201d says Silver. That\u2019s a lot of code for AI to potentially touch, especially as Microsoft pushes beyond simple code completion towards more automation with AI agents.<\/p>\n
In May, Microsoft embedded a coding agent directly into GitHub Copilot, letting developers assign it work to do. The agent then goes off and creates its own development environment, runs in the background, and creates draft pull requests. \u201cWhat we see is that developers save on average 30 minutes on simple tasks, over a half day on medium tasks, and two weeks on complex tasks,\u201d says Silver. Microsoft\u2019s developers are using it for time-consuming and monotonous tasks like fixing bugs and improving documentation for apps and services.<\/p>\n
Microsoft looks at developer hours saved, incidents mitigated, or estimated hours saved for tasks to get to these numbers. \u201cAdditionally, we look at the actions completed by the agentic capabilities, such as the number of pull-requests it contributes to,\u201d says Silver.<\/p>\n
Measuring the impact of AI on developer productivity is something that I hear Microsoft is obsessing about internally, even if some studies show AI can make experienced developers slower<\/a>. Some employees, who wish to remain anonymous, feel that Microsoft executives aren\u2019t happy with how often developers use AI right now. There\u2019s a push internally to get developers to use AI first for everything, but I hear that adoption isn\u2019t always organic.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does require a little bit of intentional engagement to allow the mindset shift to click in,\u201d admits Silver. While Microsoft\u2019s developers could ignore GitHub Copilot Chat because it was in a separate window, the agentic mode and coding agent are right in the context of how developers work. \u201cIt becomes habit forming and changes behavior,\u201d says Silver.<\/p>\n Microsoft says 91 percent of its engineering teams use GitHub Copilot, but sources have shared data that suggests, in some parts of the company, overall AI tool adoption is much lower \u2013 closer to the 51 percent of developers who told Stack Overflow<\/a> they\u2019re now using AI tools professionally every day.<\/p>\n Silver rattles off a list of teams that have sped up their work with AI. The Xbox team used Copilot\u2019s app modernization agent to upgrade their core Xbox service from .NET 6 to .NET 8 recently. \u201cThey saw an 88 percent reduction in manual migration effort,\u201d she says, taking \u201cmonths of work and compressing it down into days.\u201d Microsoft\u2019s discovery and quantum team used the Copilot agent to migrate a Java app to the latest version, and saw a similar \u201creduction in the effort that was needed, thanks to the AI agent auto detecting deprecated APIs, suggesting fixes, and identifying security vulnerabilities.\u201d The company\u2019s \u201cES Chat\u201d agent, which can answer questions about Microsoft\u2019s engineering systems, has saved engineers \u201c46 minutes per task compared to traditional search methods.\u201d Microsoft is also using AI agents to help Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) respond to outages of systems and apps. There, the company has already saved over \u201c10,000 hours of operational time.\u201d<\/p>\n All of these time savings mean that Microsoft\u2019s code is increasingly being built by AI instead of just humans, but Silver won\u2019t put a number on how much of Microsoft\u2019s code is being built by AI. She argues it\u2019s too hard to track everything as AI is embedded in code generation, review processes, test generations, and deployment pipelines. \u201cThe agents really become a core part of the engineering system itself,\u201d says Silver. \u201cThis is one of the reasons why it\u2019s so hard to pin a precise number on the number of lines of code that the AI is contributing.\u201d I also get a sense that promoting a number that\u2019s either too high or too low would be counterproductive to Microsoft\u2019s marketing efforts, both internally and externally.<\/p>\n Still, I don\u2019t doubt the complexity of the task. A human engineer could submit code while Copilot is running inside their editor, or the engineer could copy and paste AI code into their editor. It\u2019s fair to say that AI is prevalent in some parts of Microsoft\u2019s developer output. You only need to look at the codebases of Aspire<\/a>, Typescript Go<\/a>, and Microsoft\u2019s Agent Framework<\/a> to see that Copilot is a major contributor to all of them.<\/p>\n The AI systems also aren\u2019t perfect. Silver says engineers review their work. And a source at Microsoft told me that some of the tools aren\u2019t all they\u2019re cracked up to be. \u201cES Chat saves me time in that I don\u2019t use it,\u201d the person joked.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s aggressive push towards AI agents coding for developers has also got some employees inside the company concerned about the future. I\u2019ve spoken to engineers in Microsoft\u2019s CoreAI division that are worried about the use of autonomous AI agents, particularly as they pick up the types of projects that junior developers could be assigned. There\u2019s a real fear in the industry, and inside Microsoft, that junior developer roles are disappearing<\/a>, leaving experienced devs having to babysit the output of AI tools.<\/p>\n With Nadella\u2019s goal of overhauling Microsoft into a company that\u2019s focused on AI agents doing work, this all sounds like less humans involved in coding in the future. Silver is taking the optimistic view that AI will simply allow developers to offload the boring tasks and focus on creativity instead.<\/p>\n \u201cNo developer got into the industry because they wanted to be assigned a months-long code maintenance migration effort,\u201d says Silver. \u201cThey want to be at the cutting edge, they want to create, they want to innovate. These are the kinds of things they want to offload to AI so they can get back to the process of creation.\u201d<\/p>\n You can now try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) on any PC, laptop, or tablet. Microsoft launched the Xbox FSE on all handheld devices last week, but it\u2019s also started testing it on any PC, laptop, or tablet<\/a>. It adds a console-like UI to the main Xbox app that appears at boot, making it ideal for a living room PC. I\u2019m surprised to see the Xbox FSE appear on all handhelds so quickly, especially as Lenovo\u2019s Legion Go 2 was the first handheld outside of Asus confirmed to be getting Xbox FSE in spring 2026. It feels like Microsoft is rapidly rolling out Xbox FSE to get more people using it and more bug reports. I\u2019m sure the emergency of the Steam Machine is also a part of why it\u2019s rolling out so quickly.Xbox Ally devices get a new game profile feature. If you\u2019re an Xbox Ally or Xbox Ally X owner, Microsoft has started previewing its new default game profile feature<\/a> this week. It automatically optimizes frame rates and power consumption across 40 games, saving you from manually tweaking game settings. The settings should help save battery life, and Microsoft says the game profile for Hollow Knight: Silksong will add nearly an hour of battery life compared to the performance mode.Microsoft is speeding up and decluttering File Explorer in Windows 11. Microsoft is making some changes to the File Explorer in Windows 11<\/a> that mean it will preload \u201cto help improve File Explorer launch performance.\u201d This preloading appears to be targeted at low-end systems where performance is constrained, and you\u2019ll be able to disable it on any PC. Microsoft is also tweaking the context menus in File Explorer to remove some of the clutter and reduce the amount of space less commonly used actions take up.Notepad is getting tables. Don\u2019t worry I\u2019m not adding tables to the newsletter. Microsoft is now testing tables inside Windows Notepad<\/a>. It\u2019s the latest addition to the app, that takes it way beyond just a default text editor. I\u2019m sure some people will moan that this makes Notepad \u201cbloatware,\u201d but the addition of tables and a full-featured Markdown editor are great improvements for my use of Notepad.Microsoft\u2019s AI-powered copy and paste can now use on-device AI. Microsoft is upgrading its Advanced Paste tool in PowerToys<\/a> so you can route requests through the company\u2019s Foundry Local tool. You can also use the open-source Ollama, and both options will run AI models on a device\u2019s NPU instead of from the cloud so you won\u2019t need to purchase credits to perform some Advanced Paste features.Microsoft makes Zork open-source. The original Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III games are now available under the MIT license. Microsoft, Xbox, and Activision have teamed up to preserve the clever Z-Machine engine that powered the Zork games and allow students, teachers, and developers to study the code and learn from it. Microsoft has also worked with<\/a> Jason Scott, from the Internet Archive, to grant this open-source license.Xbox Crocs are real. Microsoft has launched Xbox-themed Crocs this week, priced at $80. After releasing Windows XP-themed Crocs earlier this year, the Xbox limited edition Crocs<\/a> mimic the Xbox One X\u2019s controller. Both Xbox Crocs shoes feature the classic X, Y, B, A buttons, D-pad, left and right analog sticks, and a white Xbox button and bumpers on the sides. There\u2019s even a $20 set of shoe charms with characters and icons from Halo, Fallout, Doom, World of Warcraft, and Sea of Thieves.Copilot is leaving WhatsApp. ChatGPT and Copilot are both disappearing from WhatsApp<\/a>, thanks to Meta\u2019s new platform policies. Copilot will remain inside WhatsApp until January 15th, 2026. If you were one of the few relying on this feature, you\u2019ll have to switch over to the dedicated Copilot mobile app instead.Fara-7B is Microsoft\u2019s first agentic small language model for computer use. Microsoft is building on the work of its Phi small language models by releasing Fara-7B this week. Instead of providing you with text-based responses, Fara-7B is designed to control computer interfaces<\/a> and use a computer for you. It\u2019s an experimental release for now, and Microsoft is inviting people to get an early hands-on and provide feedback before it\u2019s released more broadly. Copilot in Edge is now a shopping assistant. Just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Microsoft has updated its Copilot in Edge feature with a bunch of shopping assistant capabilities<\/a>. Copilot in Edge now has tools like cashback, price comparison, price history, and price tracking. It works on supported retailers to provide comparisons against other retailers to make it easy to get the best price for a product.Microsoft\u2019s AI enterprise apps get new icons, too. After rolling out new Office icons, Microsoft is now overhauling the icons for its enterprise AI apps and services<\/a>. The business apps and agents all have new icons that closely match the Microsoft 365 ones, and they\u2019re starting to appear across Microsoft\u2019s Power Platform, Foundry, and other AI services.Claude Opus 4.5 is now rolling out to GitHub Copilot. Microsoft has been quick to adopt Anthropic\u2019s latest Claude AI model inside GitHub Copilot this week<\/a>. Early testing has shown that Opus 4.5 \u201csurpassed internal coding benchmarks, while cutting token usage in half.\u201d Microsoft says Anthropic\u2019s latest model is also \u201cgreat for code migration and code refactoring.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> if you want to discuss anything else. If you\u2019ve heard about any of Microsoft\u2019s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I\u2019m tomwarren.01<\/a>. I\u2019m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you\u2019d prefer to chat there.<\/p>\n Thanks for subscribing to Notepad.<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Tom WarrenClose Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All by Tom Warren<\/a><\/p>\n MicrosoftCloseMicrosoft<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Microsoft<\/a><\/p>\n NotepadCloseNotepad<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764267980_423_Tom_BLURPLE.jpg\"\/)
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