Box expands its toolbox with more AI agents for search, deep research and data extraction

Cloud content management giant Box Inc. today is expanding its artificial intelligence capabilities with the launch of new AI agents for search, deep research and data extraction that will automate yet more tasks on behalf of users.

In addition, there’s a new Box AI Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, which expands the reach of Box content into applications such as Word, Teams, PowerPoint and Copilot Chat.

Box announced its latest AI agents at its virtual Content + AI Summit today. They build on the original agentic AI capabilities introduced in its platform in February.

The company has emerged as a pioneer in AI, making the technology a central aspect of its content management platform. AI has been integrated into almost every aspect of Box, from its core metadata layer to the user experience. It began in 2023, early in the generative AI boom, when it announced a suite of tools called Box AI, aimed at helping workers to become more productive.

Since then, Box has progressively updated its AI features, launching Box AI Studio last year to provide users with a way to create and use their own AI agents to perform increasingly complex tasks. It has also launched Box Apps, which is a no-code development tool for users to create intelligent applications and workflows for business processes such as invoice processing and contract management.

Then in February, it launched its first AI agents to automate tasks such as querying documents and extracting data from files, providing faster access to the insights locked within them.

AI agents for search, deep research and data extraction

With today’s update, Box says it’s about to enhance its agentic AI capabilities further, with new agents for search, deep research and enhanced data extraction.

Box said the AI search agent (pictured) can perform “quick lookups,” rapidly surfacing targeted answers such as an expiration date in a contract or the name of a client in meeting notes. It can also handle more complex queries, using high-precision semantic analysis techniques to uncover hidden relationships and insights from large volumes of documents.

Speaking to SiliconANGLE, Box Chief Executive Aaron Levie said AI agents build on the capabilities of generative AI chatbots that have already become quite widespread among enterprise workers.

“Unlike when you just ask an AI model a question, an agent will go off and do a bunch of work for you,” he explained. “Maybe it uses a search tool, so it does a search query. It will read through those results, read the content of that document, and connect the dots with other documents.”

The deep research agents do something similar, but they’re more focused, with the ability to analyze thousands of documents and files to surface meaning and trends. When given a task, they’ll first identify the most relevant files using Box’s retrieval-augmented generation framework, before synthesizing what it finds into digestible chunks, so users can quickly access the information they need.

If you want to acquire a company, for example, Deep Research will help you to find everything on it, Levie explained.

As for the enhanced data extraction, it will help Box’s AI agents to transform unstructured information such as scanned PDFs and handwritten notes into structured data that’s more actionable, the company said. They’ll leverage technologies such as optical character recognition and document intelligence to find and extract key data, such as financial figures, contractual clauses and terms, dates and so on.

Levie said Box is bringing its enhanced data extraction capabilities to partners such as Salesforce too. As an example, he said,  if you’re inside Agentforce and you want to find meeting notes about a client, the agent can pull that out.

According to Box, its agents are powered by “best-in-class” AI models from companies including OpenAI, Amazon Web Services Inc., Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, IBM Corp., xAI Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. This means users, or the agents themselves, can choose the most appropriate model for each task.

Intelligent content management

Box said the search, deep research and enhanced data extraction agents will be available in the coming months, but customers won’t have to wait to access the new AI agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is launching in beta today.

The idea with this agent is to link Box and its content management system directly to Microsoft applications such as Word, Teams, PowerPoint and Copilot Chat. When using those apps, they’ll be able to ask the agent to retrieve content directly from Box, without actually having to access Box themselves. The agents will be able to search, analyze and act on that information.

Levie said this is in line with the company’s ultimate ambition to build an “intelligent content management platform” that will be able to bring users’ content to wherever they’re currently working.

He added that the Microsoft integration expands a growing ecosystem of AI partnerships. Previously, Box has integrated its content and agents with platforms such as Google Agentspace, IBM watsonx Orchestrate, Salesforce Agentforce, Slack AI, ServiceNow AI Agent Fabric and Zoom AI Companion.

For now, Box is focused on providing basic agentic AI features such as search and extraction, but it ultimately wants to build on these features, Levie said.

“This is going to be a multiyear journey,” he said. “Companies are going to take years to figure out how to use agents in their business, so we’re still in an exponential part of the curve.”

As AI agents become more integrated with enterprise workflows, businesses are going to need to pay a lot more attention to their data architectures, Levie predicted. That’s because they’ll want to ensure that their unstructured content, or their CRM data, isn’t stored somewhere where it cannot be accessed by AI.

“You have a risk of not capturing the full upside of AI if you don’t have a clean data architecture,” he said. “We know exactly where our customer data is, we know where our financial data is, we know our content is in Box. You need to have these very clear swim lanes, and allow AI agents to have access to all of this data.”

Amy Machado, an analyst with International Data Corp., said Box promises to deliver a real breakthrough by enabling AI to understand and act on the vast amounts of content that are essential to enterprise operations. “Customers will be able to leverage AI to instantly find answers, extract insights, and create new content with their most critical information already securely stored in Box,” she said. “It’s a big and important step forward in making AI truly useful across the enterprise.”

With reporting from Robert Hof

Image: Box