Microsoft adds Anthropic AI models to Microsoft 365 Copilot in beta

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it is adding AI models from Anthropic to parts of its Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, allowing business customers to choose between OpenAI and Anthropic models for certain functions starting immediately for beta users. The change affects Copilot's Researcher reasoning agent and the Copilot Studio agent-development environment, and will be available to customers who opt in through Microsoft’s Frontier preview program or enable access via the Microsoft 365 admin console.

The company said users will be able to select Claude Opus 4.1 for Researcher, a tool designed for complex, multistep research such as market analysis and report building, and to choose Claude Sonnet 4 or Claude Opus 4.1 within Copilot Studio when orchestrating agentic tasks. Administrators and developers will see a model selection menu in Copilot Studio that lets teams mix and match OpenAI, Anthropic, or Azure Model Catalog models depending on task needs. Microsoft emphasized that Microsoft 365 Copilot itself will continue to be powered by OpenAI’s latest models. Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s president of business and industry Copilot, said, "Copilot will continue to be powered by...