Microsoft announced two new AI tools for Copilot, capable of ‘deep research’ and ‘advanced data analysis’: Researcher and Analyst.
Microsoft announced two new tools for its AI-powered assistant Copilot that can perform ‘deep research’ and ‘advanced data analysis’: Researcher and Analyst. The company claims that these tools are the first examples to offer advanced analysis and research capabilities to Microsoft 365 Copilot users.
Researcher can perform multi-step analyses using OpenAI’s deep research model and pull data from third-party platforms such as Confluence, ServiceNow and Salesforce to provide comprehensive insights to its users. According to Microsoft, this tool can be used in complex tasks for the business world, such as creating marketing strategies or preparing quarterly reports.
Analyst works with OpenAI’s o3-mini reasoning model and can perform advanced data analysis. Analyst, which can transform raw data into tables and graphs using the Python programming language, can provide more detailed analyses by processing data with chain thinking. Microsoft claims that the capabilities of this tool are close to an experienced data scientist.
These new tools will be available to Microsoft 365 Copilot users in April as part of an early access programme called Frontier. In addition, new AI agents integrated into Copilot Studio will have the ability to automate tasks within certain rules. Microsoft claims that these agents will be able to ‘automate every task imaginable’. However, it remains to be seen whether these technologies will actually work as promised.
