Microsoft wants to streamline your workday with powerful AI agents

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced new and updated AI-powered agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat aimed at enterprise collaboration, project management, and data analysis. In a blog post, Microsoft product manager Daniela Chocron noted, “Agents are fundamentally changing how businesses do business. They help companies grow faster and create value better, driving a new sort of hybrid work.“

Microsoft has announced powerful AI agents to help streamline your daily work

The two new AI agents making their way into Microsoft 365 in preview from this month are Researcher and Analyst. The company released both of them as part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 spring release.

As the name suggests, Researcher handles complex, multistage projects by blending OpenAI’s research models with Microsoft’s deep data orchestration. Analyst, on the other hand, is a digital data scientist. It uses Python and chain-of-thought reasoning to offer insights from raw datasets available. 

Microsoft says it will also debut yet another AI agent in June. The company calls it “Skills,” which aims to talent discovery and workforce planning. Skills help employees to find experts, understand colleagues’ capabilities, and map skill gaps across an organization using Microsoft’s new People Skills data layer.

Microsoft also says that starting next month, Copilot Chat will launch an Agent Store to help users “discover and use out-of-the-box and custom agents from Microsoft, partners, and custom creations.” The company further noted that three new AI agents will be integrated across Microsoft 365 products and services. These include the following: 

1. Interpreter: Available now in public preview, it can offer real-time speech-to-speech translations for nine languages during Teams meetings.
2. Facilitator: It will launch in early May and will help moderate and summarize meetings, track decisions, and surface relevant insights.
3. Project Manager: Available now in public preview within Microsoft Planner, this AI agent will help automate project creation and task management. It further allows generating detailed project status reports.

SharePoint agents, revamped Copilot app, and Copilot Notebooks

Microsoft also said that the SharePoint AI agents will start to roll out in May. It will allow users to interact with SharePoint-based data right in Copilot Chat. These agents can be shared across Microsoft Teams or via email and are designed to serve up scoped, context-aware responses from internal content libraries. 

Lastly, Microsoft has introduced a revamped Copilot app for better human-agent interaction. The Copilot app is now fast, offers an AI-powered search experience, and a new Create interface. The company has also added Copilot Notebooks, which allow converting raw data and content into instant insights and action.