Microsoft introduces deep research and analysis tools for Copilot

Microsoft has launched two new "reasoning agents" for Copilot that were designed to analyze vast amounts of work data, including emails, meetings, chats and documents. The first tool called "Researcher" is based on OpenAI's deep research model combined with Copilot's advanced orchestration and deep search capabilities. Researcher was made for "complex, multi-step research" at work. It can take a user's internal work data along with additional information from the web, such as competitive data, emerging trends and the latest market analysis, to create market strategies and comprehensive quarterly reports, among other potential uses. Plus, it can pull data from Salesforce, ServiceNow and other external sources.

Meanwhile, the new "Analyst" tool was built to function like a skilled data scientist. It's based on OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model and uses "chain-of-thought reasoning" to solve issues in multiple steps to provide answers that Microsoft says "mirror human analytical thinking." It can process raw data across multiple spreadsheets to, say, predict future revenue and expenses, forecast demand for a new product and visualize the purchasing patterns of customers. For the most complex data queries, it can run Python, and users will be able to view the code while it's running in real time. 

Both Researcher and Analyst will be rolling out to customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license starting in April as part of "Frontier." Customers enrolled to the new Frontier program will get access to Copilot technologies while they're still in development, starting with these two new tools. 

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