Many workers have used AI in either an informal capacity or as their day-to-day SaaS apps adopt it. They found AI agents as a valuable source of information and a way to collate in reports they can share directly in seconds rather than hours or days. As long as they checked the source data and conclusions were valid.
Microsoft is formalising that approach with specific agents dedicated to the research and analyst roles. The two bots are big ticket items for knowledge workers, busy business analysts and those in any research role.
The agents can support workers in their own knowledge quests, and take on the role for businesses that don’t have the budget for such staff.
Agents taking over the office
The Analyst and Research agents will feature in Microsoft’s new Agent Store as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot for employees. It will feature agentic products from a range of providers including Monday.com to demonstrate how big tech firms play nicely together these days.
Researcher helps workers tackle complex, multi-step research, turning anyone into a powerful creator of business ideas and insights. Analyst thinks like a skilled data scientist, so users can go from raw data to insights in minutes.
Again, smaller firms struggle to hire and get value from advanced science roles, so this could be a huge advantage for those firms.
Run through Copilot, users can build up files containing content and ideas from the agents, getting over the hump of information vanishing from a single conversation users might have had sometime last week.
This news follows on from the release of Copilot Studio, and is likely just the latest in an onslaught of agent bots as tech companies try to get users working with their agentic front-end rather than a rivals’ version.
This development shows how AI is fast moving away from chat and becoming a more-rounded, accessible, business tool.