Microsoft adds ‘deep reasoning’ Copilot AI for research and data analysis

Richard Lawler is a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.

After Google and OpenAI offered up AI news on Tuesday, Microsoft has followed with announcements of its own, including details of two “deep reasoning” agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot that it claims are the first of their kind, dubbed Researcher and Analyst, as well as new capabilities for custom AI agents. Researcher relies on OpenAI’s deep research AI model to pull off “complex, multi-step research,” along with access to third-party data via connectors to sources like Salesforce or ServiceNow so that business customers can derive insights from across their tools.

Analyst is based on the o3-mini reasoning model from OpenAI, and Microsoft claims that with chain-of-thought reasoning, it’s capable of turning raw data into spreadsheets, running Python code that you can view while it’s running, and operate on the level of a skilled data scientist, pulling together reports like this one (pdf).

Those tools are scheduled to start rolling out in April to Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders in an early access program, along with new autonomous agent capabilities that are starting to roll out now in Copilot Studio.

Microsoft claims the new agent flows in Copilot are powerful enough to “automate any task you can imagine” with rule-based workflows that include AI actions. The LinkedIn announcement describes situations like an agent flow that directs feedback emails to the correct team, but we’ll have to see it in action to find out how that’s better than adding a checkbox or two, or how well its “low code” experience really works, and if it can deliver on the promises AI companies are making about agents.