Microsoft is planning to incorporate artificial intelligence models from Anthropic into its Copilot assistant, indicating the software giant's effort to lessen reliance on its prominent collaboration with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Copilot will continue to utilize OpenAI's latest models, but users will have the option to choose Anthropic models, Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1, in Copilot's AI reasoning agent "Researcher," as well as during agent development in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Beginning Wednesday, those who choose to test Claude will be able to alternate between OpenAI and Anthropic models within Researcher, according to Charles Lamanna, president of Microsoft's operations for Copilot in business and industry.

Microsoft, a major financial supporter of OpenAI, is attempting to lessen its dependence on the startup and is creating its own AI models, while also incorporating models from China's DeepSeek into its Azure cloud service.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it would provide new AI models developed by firms such as Elon Musk's xAI and Meta Platforms, all hosted in its own data centers.

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Anthropic's AI models are mainly hosted on Amazon Web Services, which competes with Microsoft's cloud services.

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Last year, Microsoft announced that it was permitting software engineers to receive coding assistance from Anthropic and Google models in the GitHub Copilot Chat assistant, in addition to OpenAI.

Anthropic, established in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders, has recently received a valuation of $183 billion from investors. Microsoft continues to be the sole cloud provider for OpenAI’s API that third-party applications depend on.

Anthropic's model will initially be available in Researcher, a tool for Microsoft 365 Copilot that can collect and evaluate data and produce reports.

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Workers at companies participating in Microsoft’s Frontier program, granting early access to AI capabilities, can now opt to utilize Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 reasoning model, which is designed for tackling intricate tasks, instead of OpenAI’s rival product in Researcher.