Microsoft introduced “deeply” AI-powered tools in Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI ChatBot application.
There are many in-depth research agents recently launched in chatbots, including Openai’s Chatgpt, Google’s Gemini and Xai’s Grok. What powers them is the so-called reasoning AI model, which has the ability to think about problems and fact check itself, which may be important for in-depth research on topics.
Microsoft’s taste is called researchers and analysts.
Researchers combine OpenAI’s in-depth research model that powers the company’s own power In-depth study of CHATGPT Tools – With “Advanced Orchestration” and “Deep Search Features”. Microsoft claims researchers can do analysis, including developing a strategy and creating quarterly reports for clients.
As for analysts, it is built on OpenAI’s O3-Mini inference model and is “optimized for advanced data analysis.” Analysts iteratively carry out questions, take steps to improve their “thinking” and provide detailed answers to the query. Analysts can also run the programming language Python to solve complex data queries, Microsoft added, and expose it to “work” for inspection.
What makes Microsoft’s in-depth research tools more unique than competitors is that they have access to work data as well as the global network. For example, researchers can use third-party data connectors to borrow data from AI “agents”, tools, and applications such as Confluence, ServiceNow, and Salesforce.
Of course, the real challenge is to make sure tools like researchers and analysts don’t hallucinate or make things up in other ways. Models including O3-Mini and in-depth research are by no means perfect. From time to time, they mislead their work, draw false conclusions, and extract from suspicious public websites to inform their reasoning.
Microsoft is launching a new border program where Microsoft 365 Copilot customers can access researchers and analysts. Those recruited in Frontier will first get experimental Copilot functionality, which will attract researchers and analysts starting in April.
