It looks like Microsoft will soon be releasing a new SKU, Microsoft 365 E7, according to my friend — and Microsoft expert’s expert — Mary Jo Foley. As she described it last week, the release “will be key to Microsoft’s plan to license ‘agentic’ workers like human employees.” 

Oh boy. Suddenly, I can see millions more pink slips coming soon for white-collar employees. Until now, as Sharon Fisher — another colleague of mine — observed, companies frequently blame AI for job cuts. But the reality has been that many were just saying that as an all-purpose excuse for layoffs. 

But that story line may be about to change.

Microsoft’s expected AI move isn’t just about expanding its Copilot ecosystem. It’s about reshaping how businesses think of AI itself. The company now wants you to hire its AI agents rather than just use them. That’s not just clever branding; it’s a fundamental change in how Microsoft expects enterprises to integrate AI into their operations.

These new autonomous AI agents will take over defined roles. Instead of waiting for a prompt, they run continuously, managing sales data, scheduling workflows, even  monitoring IT systems. Microsoft describes them as “trusted team members” that can handle repeatable knowledge work, guided by user policy and corporate data access controls.

In its own marketing, Microsoft has already reframed Copilot Studio explicitly as an agent. On the Copilot Studio product page, it states, “agents use AI to automate and execute business processes for a person, team, or organization.” Further, Microsoft stresses that agents “may take actions when asked, automate workflows, and replace repetitive tasks.” 

After years of Copilot being essentially a smarter autocomplete for Office 365, this move suggests Microsoft wants to transform AI into an operational layer of the enterprise. That is something that’s persistent, accountable, and, yes, billable. 

In Microsoft’s world, AI agents are tomorrow’s temp workers.

There’s also a subtle but important business dimension here. “Hiring” an AI agent isn’t a Microsoft metaphor; it’s the company’s good old subscription model in a new suit. Each agent could be licensed like a user, tied to a specific function and workload. It’s another vector for cloud consumption, but wrapped in the language of workforce expansion rather than IT procurement.

This follows a trend I’ve been writing about for years: Microsoft’s dumping of the standalone Windows PCs and software for cloud-based subscription models for both. AI was always going to be part of this plan; this is just the latest step toward ending the PC model we’ve been using since the 1980s, when the IBM PC took computing from mainframes and hobbyists to the office.  

What Microsoft is doing now is testing whether companies are ready to treat AI agents as first-class participants in their workflows. It’s a bet that the term “AI employee” won’t sound like science fiction for much longer. (In all fairness, Microsoft isn’t the only one going this way; you’ll soon see Salesforce, Google, and OpenAI racing to offer their own AI agent employees.)

Of course, “hiring” an AI won’t replace real employees this year. The promise is augmentation, not substitution — for now. What happens next year may well be another story.

On top of that, the Windows 12 rumor mill is running hot and heavy. Guess what? Microsoft has made it clear that future Windows releases will lean hard on AI, Neural Processing Units (NPUs), and Copilot‑style assistants. Reports and partner hints point to a modular CorePC architecture, with AI used not just for optional features but as a core part of search, recommendations, and system behavior.

Yes, that means those of you still grumbling about needing to buy new PCs for Windows 11 will also need to buy a new one for Windows 12. Won’t that be fun?! Add in the white-hot rise in RAM prices and costly NPU chips, and you’re talking about a double whammy to your hardware and software services bills. 

Soon, however, in Microsoft’s reimagined workplace, you might not onboard a new assistant. No, you’ll just open Azure, pick an agent from a catalog, give it access to your data, and tell it to get to work. If that’s the future, “hiring” AI could soon become as routine as provisioning a laptop.

If that future makes you cringe, I have a modest suggestion. Stop me if you’ve heard me say this before. (Too late!) It’s time to explore switching to Linux on your existing hardware. Or even Apple. Seriously, if you want to avoid software subscription hell and retain control of your computing life, Windows isn’t really a good choice.