AI Agents and Deep Research among major Copilot upgrades for Microsoft’s 50th anniversary

Microsoft is celebrating a huge 50-year anniversary this Friday on April 4th. As part of the celebration, they will host an event where they are expected to present a range of new products and features. Among these, updates to Copilot and potentially the introduction of new models may be announced. However, there’s still no clarity on whether we’ll see any new Phi models from Microsoft.

A number of new features have already been discovered either through development previews or in the Labs environment available to some users. Let’s go through them one more time. Many of these features are designed to work across both web and mobile platforms, while some could be exclusive to Surface laptops.

Starting with mobile, Copilot on Android is expected to function as an assistant application. This would allow users to interact with Copilot from any screen, making it work similarly to other assistant apps already available on Android.

On both mobile and web, Microsoft is working on a new Discover screen. This update includes a wider variety of interactive cards and introduces support for personalization. Some users have already gained access to early versions of this, including the ability to select specific topics for their daily briefing.

Another notable feature is called Vision. It’s already being tested by some pro users and would allow Copilot to access and understand content from other websites when used within the Edge browser. This functionality is expected to be rolled out more broadly in the future.

Much like ChatGPT, Copilot may soon include an option for users to adjust the reasoning effort, tailoring responses to their preferences. There’s also a feature called Pages, which allows users to create content similarly to how Canvas works in ChatGPT. This feature is now available on mobile as well.

Additional tools in development include Memory and Deep Research. These are likely to be reserved for pro customers. There’s also a feature called Characters, aimed at bringing animated avatars into Copilot, adding a more visual and engaging layer to interactions.

Another upcoming feature is Podcasts, which might be similar to the Audio Overviews feature. This would enable users to create and share audio files, which would eventually appear on the Discover page as well.

In the Labs, a feature with the mysterious name Generative Layout is under development. Its purpose is still unclear, but it might be connected to native image generation capabilities. If so, it could be added to Copilot later.

On the interface side, Microsoft is working on a side navigation bar for Copilot. This change would make the experience more traditional and aligned with common design standards across the industry.

Lastly, there’s a powerful new concept called Actions or Local Agents. These are expected to be exclusive to Surface devices and would allow Copilot to operate in conjunction with local tools. It’s not yet confirmed whether this will be tied to MCP (Model Context Protocol), but if so, it would be a strong strategic move from Microsoft.

We’ll likely get more details tomorrow during the event. It remains to be seen whether all these features will be announced or just a selection of them. Most of them will probably be released gradually, possibly through Labs and to a limited group of users at first. As is often the case, some features may initially be available only to U.S. users or pro customers. Let’s see what unfolds.