Microsoft Copilot’s next big upgrade takes on NotebookLM and could save you hours of research time

Today is a big day for Microsoft. The tech giant is celebrating half a century as an industry leader.

As part of its 50th anniversary event, Microsoft unveiled several upgrades to Copilot. Two of those features, Deep Research and Pages, use AI to organize information.

The new Pages feature for Copilot gathers notes, content, and research into a canvas. The AI tool then organizes the information into a rough draft.

"Pages lets you refine, iterate and keep the conversation going whenever you need it," says Microsoft.

Deep Research has some similar concepts to Pages in that it helps you organize information by using the power of AI. But Deep Research is designed to streamline multi-step research tasks.

Copilot can locate, analyze, and gather together information from multiple online sources or from documents and images.

Microsoft has already started rolling out its new Copilot features to some users, but it will take some time for everyone to gain access. The company notes that availability will be affected by which platform you're on, which market you're in, and which language you have Copilot set to.

These new Copilot features sound similar to NotebookLM. That tool from Google allows you to upload PDFS, websites, documents, and YouTube videos. NotebookLM then scans through any sources you've shared to share insights.

Pages and Deep Research are part of the "next chapter" in Microsoft's vision for an AI companion. Copilot also gained support for remembering information from conversations to provide better results (assuming you give the AI tool permission).

Other new features include Actions, which can complete tasks across the web, and Copilot Vision.

Copilot can even create AI-powered podcasts tailored to your interests. Over the coming months, Copilot will become a much more powerful and capable AI companion.