According to openai.com, OpenAI announced on July 9, 2026, that GPT-5.6 will become the new preferred model in Microsoft 365 Copilot, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chat, and Cowork. The company describes GPT-5.6 as its “latest flagship model series, which delivers more useful work from every token, with stronger performance per dollar and on demand capability for the most complex tasks.”
According to the announcement, GPT-5.6 will enable Microsoft 365 users to create “higher-quality work products with less effort.” Specific capabilities include helping users in Word draft and refine documents “with fewer rounds of prompting,” supporting “deeper analysis” in Excel while using tokens more efficiently, and helping turn ideas into “more polished, visually compelling presentations” in PowerPoint with less manual guidance.
Nitin Agrawal, President of Copilot & Agents Core at Microsoft, stated that customers using Copilot powered by OpenAI’s latest model “will be able to produce more polished outputs” across Microsoft 365 applications. Nikunj Handa, Head of API Product at OpenAI, noted that “Microsoft will also access OpenAI models directly through the API to bring GPT-5.6 to Microsoft 365” customers, according to openai.com.
Techcrunch.com’s headline references “breakup chatter” in its coverage of the announcement, though this context is not detailed in the available excerpts.