Microsoft Adds OpenAI-Rival Anthropic’s Claude AI Models to Copilot

Microsoft announced the expansion of model choice in Copilot on Wednesday with the addition of Anthropic's artificial intelligence (AI) models. This is the first time the Redmond-based tech giant has used a non-OpenAI model to power its chatbot. The company is adding Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 as new options for users. Initially, these Anthropic models will only power the Researcher agent and the Microsoft Copilot Studio. Interestingly, the move occurred just a week after the Windows maker and OpenAI signed a non-binding deal.

Copilot Will Now Let Users Access Claude AI Models

In a blog post, the tech giant announced the expansion of Microsoft 365 Copilot, the umbrella system that houses a wide range of AI applications across the company's products, as well as the Copilot chatbot. The company specified that despite new Anthropic models powering some features, access to the latest OpenAI models will continue.

As part of this expansion, users will now be able to use the Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 in some agentic applications. The two features which are available right now are the Researcher agent and the Copilot Studio.

Microsoft's Researcher is a reasoning agent that can provide answers to complex queries. Due to its access to the Internet, users can use it to analyse live trends, create reports, prepare product strategies, or just conduct research on a niche subject area. It can also access any files uploaded, emails, chats, meetings, files, and more to deliver the final output.

After users opt-in for Anthropic's models, they will be able to switch between Claude and OpenAI models with a model switcher button.

Copilot Studio allows users to create and customise task-specific AI agents that can be connected to other knowledge hubs and systems for workflow automation, reasoning, and other agentic tasks. Users can also create multiagent systems and prompt tools using the Copilot Studio.

So far, the Microsoft Copilot Studio allows users to choose between models from OpenAI or Azure Model Catalog, but now users will also be able to select Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1. To make the selection, users can tap on a drop down menu located at the top right of the page.