Microsoft introduces Copilot with “deep thinking” for research and data analysis

Microsoft has introduced Researcher and Analyst deep-thinking agents for 365 Copilot. The company says these agents are the first of their kind and will help with complex, multi-step research.

Researcher is based on OpenAI's deep analytics model and can pull data from third-party providers like Salesforce or ServiceNow so business customers can get insights from all their tools.

Analyst is based on OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model, and Microsoft says that its reasoning pipeline can transform raw data into spreadsheets and execute Python code. Microsoft has released a sample report (.pdf) created by the Researcher and Analyst AI agents.

These tools will be available to Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders starting in April 2025 as part of the early access program. Microsoft says the new Copilot agents are powerful enough to "automate any task you can imagine."