Microsoft Copilot Now Offers Claude Models - How To Try Them

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Microsoft's Researcher supplier tin now beryllium powered by Claude Opus 4.1.
• Anthropic's models are besides now disposable successful Copilot Studio.
• Microsoft has been distancing itself from its dependence connected OpenAI.

Microsoft is continuing to put successful its caller business pinch Anthropic, while distancing itself further from OpenAI.

On Wednesday, nan tech elephantine announced that 2 of Anthropic's frontier models, Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4.1, were now disposable done its Copilot AI assistant.

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"Copilot will proceed to beryllium powered by OpenAI's latest models, and now our customers will person nan elasticity to usage Anthropic models too," Charles Lamanna, president of Copilot's business and manufacture section astatine Microsoft, wrote successful a institution blog post. 

Claude Opus 4.1 successful Researcher

Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers will now person nan action to take betwixt OpenAI's reasoning models and Claude Opus 4.1 erstwhile utilizing Microsoft's Researcher, an AI supplier wrong Copilot designed to grip complex, multistep tasks. 

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Users will spot a "Try Claude" fastener successful nan top-right area of Copilot erstwhile utilizing Researcher. Selecting it will activate Opus 4.1 alternatively of OpenAI's models, which nan strategy uses by default.

Claude successful Copilot Studio

Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4.1 are besides now disposable done Copilot Studio, a level Microsoft launched past twelvemonth done which customers tin creation civilization agents. Studio besides has mix-and-match capabilities enabling nan creation of agents that incorporated elements of models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others hosted connected Azure.

OpenAI's GPT-4o is still included arsenic nan default exemplary for civilization agents made successful Copilot Studio. To prime a different OpenAI exemplary aliases 1 of nan 2 Claude models that are now available, users tin click connected nan ellipses adjacent to "Agent's model" successful nan Details section. They'll past beryllium directed to a caller model wherever they tin click a drop-down paper to take from each of nan disposable models. 

Also: OpenAI tested GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini connected real-world tasks - nan results were surprising

Both Claude models are listed arsenic "external," since they're not hosted by Microsoft's servers and are truthful taxable to Anthropic's position of service.

A shifting dynamic

The summation of Anthropic's frontier models to Copilot marks Microsoft's latest effort to diversify its AI offerings for customers. 

Until recently, nan institution was almost exclusively limited upon OpenAI to substance its AI products. But arsenic OpenAI shifts its business structure -- it's besides reportedly now partnering pinch Google, Microsoft's biggest competitor, to summation entree to its unreality computing resources -- nan 2 companies person drifted apart. 

Also: How group really usage ChatGPT vs Claude - and what nan differences show us

Microsoft kicked disconnected a business pinch Anthropic earlier this month, embedding nan startup's AI systems across its suite of Microsoft 365 workplace productivity apps. That news followed intimately connected nan heels of Anthropic's latest backing round, which near it pinch a valuation of $183 billion, a monolithic fig fueled successful ample portion by nan fame of nan company's products among endeavor clients.

Microsoft besides announced nan motorboat past period of its first in-house models, MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview -- different move that signaled an ongoing drift distant from OpenAI.