I paid Microsoft's premium Copilot agents to do my work - they were confidently bad at it - ZDNET

Our gifting experts are obsessively searching for holiday gifts that are unique, thoughtful and suitable for any budget. Can you get a Copilot agent to do your work for you? I tried, but the AI wasn't ready to play along. The Microsoft Copilot Analyst agent at work Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Microsoft is spending an insane amount of money on its AI features, building data centers and licensing large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, while it also tries to build its own in-house alternatives. The goal, driven straight from the top of Redmond’s org chart, is to turn the combination of Windows and Microsoft 365 into an “agentic OS,” capable of doing the tasks that make corporate life miserable: writing memos, building presentations, organizing meetings, and automating routine tasks. Also: Work IQ is Microsoft’s big bet on agent-first enterprise IT, and I have questions But are those investments paying off? Developers seem to be generally happy with the productivity gains they’re seeing from tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, but the agents working in the business sphere don’t seem nearly as competent. Over the past few weeks, I’ve b