Copilot’s Persistent Agents Put Identity, Cost and Control at the Centre

Microsoft is rebuilding Copilot around persistent agents that can create apps, edit Office files and continue recurring work, shifting identity, permissions, auditability and metered cost into daily operations. We also examine Anthropic’s US$11.6 billion Akamai capacity commitment, Microsoft’s open test-and-control loop for agent risks, a proposed US AI disclosure law, Kiteworks’ precautionary shutdown, and an open dataset of predicted viral protein complexes. In What Changes for You: Perplexity brings a local-first agent stack to AMD-powered Windows PCs, while Meituan’s LongCat 2.5 Preview adds image understanding for existing coding and agent harnesses. Full transcript: https://www.owenonthenet.com/podcast/2026-09-27/ Sources: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/09/25/introducing-the-new-copilot-with-home-code-and-autopilot https://www.ir.akamai.com/news-releases/news-release-details/akamai-announces-116-billion-multi-year-agreement-anthropic https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1086222/000119312526401048/d288154d8k.htm https://commandline.microsoft.com/run-assert-eval-responsible-ai-agent-risk-discovery-at-runtime https://www.lankford.senate.gov/news/press-releases/lankford-coons-britt-and-schatz-introduce-bipartisan-ai-safety-and-transparency-legislation https://www.kiteworks.com/ja/company/press-releases/kiteworks-precautionary-shutdown-advisory https://www.sophos.com/en-us/blog/kiteworks-recommends-server-shutdown-pending-possible-attack https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-protein-dataset https://newsroom.amd.com/news/amd-perplexity-agentic-pcs https://www.perplexity.ai/en-GB/hub/products/portable-computer https://longcat.chat/platform/docs/ChangeLog.html