Powered by OpenAI’s Codex, Copilot brought generative autocomplete to millions of developers and redefined software productivity.
In 2021, GitHub and OpenAI launched Copilot in preview, powered by Codex (a GPT descendant trained on code). It suggested whole functions inside VS Code.
Productivity and controversy arrived together: training-code licenses, security, and overtrust in wrong suggestions.
Copilot foreshadowed 2024–2026 software agents: from completing lines to proposing PRs and running tools.
On 25 September 2026 Jared Spataro unveiled the new Copilot with three capabilities: Home (chat and Cowork with Office built in), Code (sandboxed app building powered by GitHub Copilot tech) and Autopilot (formerly Scout), a persistent cloud agent. Rollout starts via the Frontier program; Code and Autopilot will use usage-based billing with Copilot Credits.
At DevDay 2026 on September 29 in San Francisco, OpenAI announced more than 20 launches: dots, always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra; GPT-6.1 Sol, near-Astra capability at one fifth of Astra's token prices ($2 input and $10 output per million in the API); Astra Ultrafast; Codex in the cloud; computer use in the Agents API; plugin extensions and new collaboration tools in ChatGPT.
On 28 September 2026 Anthropic introduced Claude Sonnet 5.5, the second model in the Claude 5.5 family: more than 30% faster than Sonnet 5, up to 30% lower cost per task despite the same per-token price ($2/$10 per million), and the first Sonnet with cyber and anti-distillation safeguards like those on more capable models. Available on the Claude platform, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.