Viral posts claim “Office is now Microsoft 365 Copilot,” but that’s not the full story

A post from @vxunderground on X went viral over the past few hours, claiming Microsoft renamed Office to “Microsoft 365 Copilot App.” The post called Microsoft “so fuc***g stupid” and pulled in over 750,000 views. Perplexity AI’s official account also declared it “BREAKING” news, saying 400 million Office users had become “AI users overnight”.

Except that’s not what happened. Not exactly, anyway.

Tom Warren from The Verge stepped in to dismiss the claims in a quoted post. He explained that Microsoft renamed the “Microsoft 365 app” (which was previously called the Office app) to “Microsoft 365 Copilot App” around a year ago.

Office itself became Microsoft 365 back in 2022. It’s still called that. Warren joked, “thanks for coming to my TED talk” after his explanation, though he did agree that “Microsoft’s branding is always confusing”.

Upon checking Microsoft’s official support page, it shows that the rename went live on January 15, 2025. But here’s the thing: this change only affects the hub app people use to browse files and launch programs. Word is still Word. Excel is still Excel. PowerPoint is still PowerPoint.

Even How-To Geek’s Corbin Davenport found that Office.com has shown “the Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)” since at least February 14, 2025, according to Internet Archive records. Screenshots of that label spread everywhere, making people think the entire Office brand got killed off.

Users are frustrated regardless. One person on X compared it to “renaming Twitter to X,” noting that Office is “one of the most recognizable brands in the world”. LibreOffice jumped into the replies with “If anyone wants, you know, an actual office suite, we’re here”. Most of the anger isn’t even about what changed but about Microsoft’s track record of terrible naming decisions.

Microsoft now has at least three different things called “Microsoft 365 Copilot”: the mobile app, the Windows desktop hub, and the web interface. The subscription service is still Microsoft 365. The standalone version you buy once is called Microsoft Office 2024.

It’s a mess. Microsoft clearly wants to push Copilot branding everywhere to make AI seem central to everything. But based on the reaction online, it’s causing more confusion than clarity.

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