In April 2025, Microsoft launched new features such as Deep Research and Podcasts in Copilot as one of the important updates for the company’s 50th anniversary. However, Microsoft recently announced that these two consumer-oriented features will be officially offline on August 18, 2026, which means that Copilot’s product positioning is ushering in a new round of adjustments.
Microsoft to shut down Copilot Deep Research and Podcasts services next month
The Deep Research function was originally one of Copilot’s main highlights. It collects information from multiple online sources, helps users conduct in-depth analysis of complex issues, and automatically generates complete reports with references and structured content. Such capabilities are competitive in the AI assistant market, especially when ChatGPT and Gemini still provide similar research tools to general users. Microsoft’s decision means the Copilot app will no longer have such research capabilities after August 18.
Microsoft emphasizes that if users need to continue the Deep Research workflow, Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers can still use the Researcher agent in Copilot. The functional positioning of Researcher is similar to that of Deep Research. It can also search for network information and user work content, and generate reports with citations. In other words, in-depth research capabilities have not disappeared, but have been moved to enterprise and paid subscription product lines. It is worth noting that existing Deep Research reports will not be deleted. Users can still view past content in Copilot’s chat history, and can also open and save reports to their local machine through Microsoft Word. This prevents completed research results from being lost when services are terminated.
Unlike Deep Research, Copilot Podcasts’ takedown approach is more thorough. This function can convert a topic or user-uploaded content into a conversational audio program conducted by two AI voice hosts. It is a competitor to the audio overview function of Google NotebookLM launched by Microsoft. However, Microsoft stated that all Podcasts previously generated through Copilot will be completely inaccessible after August 18, and users will not be able to export audio files or save them outside Copilot. Any shared Podcasts links will also be invalidated.
Microsoft did not provide a clear reason for discontinuing the two services, but the overall direction shows that the company is gradually integrating high-level AI capabilities into Microsoft 365 Copilot, rather than maintaining it in the consumer-facing Copilot application. This is also consistent with Microsoft’s strategy in recent years: focusing more powerful AI workflows on enterprise and paid subscription product lines, and keeping general Copilot with a lighter functional positioning. It is worth mentioning that Copilot for consumers has not had a major update for nearly three to four months since the launch of Copilot Health in March 2026. In the context of the rapid evolution of the AI industry, such a pace will inevitably lead to questions about whether Microsoft is still actively investing in the consumer version of Copilot. The termination of Deep Research and Podcasts has led to speculation that Microsoft may be re-adjusting Copilot’s product boundaries and focusing resources on the enterprise market with more commercial value.
Source: KOCPC Chinese