Microsoft is introducing a "deep research" AI-powered tool in Microsoft 365 Copilot to compete with similar tools from OpenAI and Google.

Analyst is based on the o3-mini reasoning model from OpenAI, and Microsoft claims that with chain-of-thought reasoning, it’s capable of turning raw data into spreadsheets, running Python code that you can view while it’s running, and operate on the level of a skilled data scientist, pulling together reports like this one (pdf).

Microsoft is partnering with top firms to launch new AI security tools, boosting breach analysis, threat detection, and AI model protection across cloud platforms.