Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an artificial intelligence technology company event in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 30, 2024.
Dimas Adian | Bloomberg | Getty Images
london – Microsoft Starting next month, companies will be allowed to start making their own autonomous artificial intelligence agents to bring the fight back to salespersonthe company launched its own configurable agent artificial intelligence tool in September.
At its “AI Tour” event in London on Monday, Microsoft revealed plans to allow organizations to create their own autonomous agents within Copilot Studio, the US tech giant’s platform for customizing and building so-called “co-pilot” assistants.
These agents were previously available as a private preview after Microsoft originally announced them in May. Starting next month, they will enter public preview, meaning more organizations can start building their own AI agents.
AI agents can act as virtual workers that can perform a range of tasks without supervision. They are considered a significant evolution from chat interfaces to artificial intelligence based on large language models, creating an experience that blends more seamlessly into the background.
In addition to adding the ability to create autonomous agents in Copilot Studio, Microsoft said it will launch 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365, the company’s suite of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications.
Microsoft plans to introduce new agents in Dynamics 365 for sales, service, finance and supply chain teams.
How to use AI agent?
Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s vice president of modern work and business applications, showed off an example of an artificial intelligence agent developed by consulting firm McKinsey on Monday.
In the demo, the agent parsed an email to understand the content of the communication, examined its history, mapped it to industry standard terminology, found the right person in the company to take the next step, and then wrote and summarized a response .
Spataro said it may seem “magical,” but the company is able to develop its own artificial intelligence agents using only human language rather than programming language.
Microsoft demonstrated how its autonomous artificial intelligence agent works. In this example, a customer service agent receives a request for assistance with an order. Agents collect contextual data on the order and compare the issue to other common product issues. Then, after retrieving all the information, the AI sends a follow-up email.
Microsoft
“We’re excited about this because of the business value it can bring,” he noted, adding that McKinsey found it could reduce delivery times by up to 90 percent.
competition is fierce
Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to develop artificial intelligence agents as competition in the red-hot field of artificial intelligence intensifies.
Last month, at its annual Dreamforce showcase in San Francisco, Salesforce showed off a new platform called Agentforce that allows organizations to launch their own AI agents.
Zahra Bahrololoumi, CEO of Salesforce UK and Ireland, criticized the co-pilot mode of AI assistants for not meeting the needs of enterprises well.
“All of these co-pilots are activated at the edge or via email, and they’re not connected to or in the context of customer data,” Bahrololoumi told CNBC in an interview earlier this month. “It How to represent a company accurately and responsibly?”
“I don’t think we’re going to see so much corporate AI activity as a co-pilot,” she added. “I’m not saying co-pilots don’t exist for other purposes. But in the context of an enterprise, for autonomous enterprises to be able to plan, execute and take action, you’re no longer the co-pilot.”
Microsoft declined to comment on Bahrololoumi’s remarks when contacted by CNBC.
Microsoft and Salesforce have a legendary feud. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff once Calls on European regulators to investigate Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedInshowing that it violated competition rules.
Artificial intelligence strikes deal with UK government
Separately, Microsoft also announced a five-year agreement with the British government on Monday to provide public sector organizations with access to its artificial intelligence tools.
Microsoft said it will allow public sector organizations to access its Microsoft 365 suite of productivity tools, Azure cloud platform and Microsoft 365 Copilot through an agreement with the Royal Commercial Service, the UK government procurement agency.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a service from the tech giant that embeds generative artificial intelligence into its suite of productivity applications.
