Microsoft 365 Copilot adds Analyst and Research AI agents to do work of junior business assistants

Microsoft has added two new AI reasoning agents to its 365 Copilot service – Analyst and Researcher. The agents perform tasks similar to those of junior data analysts and business consultants, leveraging the latest large language models (LLMs).

Business users stand to benefit from virtual assistants available 24/7 that can potentially complete tasks faster and at a lower cost than human assistants, but they remain responsible for double-checking the work of AI agents.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a business service that utilizes AI across its feature set to improve productivity. The service can access corporate emails, data, and files, as well as authorized external data sources. The new AI agents can utilize all that information to answer prompts, analyze corporate metrics, and generate reports.

The Analyst AI agent utilizes a customized version of OpenAI o3-mini with Python programming ability to analyze corporate data. The AI can summarize its findings in reports, including figures and charts. Each step is documented and all references are linked, allowing users to validate the findings.

The Researcher AI agent utilizes a customized version of OpenAI o3 equipped with deep research capabilities along with 365 Copilot integration and deep search capabilities. Recent advances in AI technologies enable chatbots to tackle complex problems using internal and external business information, generating well-written reports. Users can provide feedback and additional prompting to improve the quality of the reports.

A subscription to Microsoft 365 Copilot for $30 per month in addition to a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan is required to use these agents. Readers can learn about the many features of Microsoft 365 and Copilot in this book on Amazon.