By Aditya Soni
(Reuters) -Microsoft will allow its customers to build autonomous artificial intelligence agents from next month, in its latest effort to tap the booming technology amid increasing investor scrutiny of its hefty AI investments.
The company is positioning autonomous agents – programs that, unlike chatbots, require little human intervention – as “apps for an AI-driven world” that can handle customer queries, identify sales leads and manage inventory.
Other big tech companies like Salesforce have also touted the potential of such agents, tools that some analysts say could give companies an easier path to monetizing the billions of dollars they’re pouring into AI.
Microsoft said its customers can use Copilot Studio – an application that requires little knowledge of computer code – to create such agents in public preview starting in November. It uses various AI models developed internally and by OpenAI for the agents.
The company is also introducing ten ready-made agents that can help with routine tasks ranging from managing the supply chain to tracking expenses and customer communications.
In a demo, McKinsey & Co, which had early access to the tools, created an agent that can manage customer queries by checking interaction history, identifying the consultant for the job and scheduling a follow-up meeting.
“The idea is that Copilot (the company’s chatbot) is the user interface for AI,” Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business and industry Copilot at Microsoft, told Reuters.
“Every employee will have a Copilot, his or her personal AI agent, and then they will use that Copilot to interact and interact with the sea of AI agents that will be there.”
Tech giants are under pressure to show returns on their major AI investments. Shares of Microsoft fell 2.8% in the September quarter, underperforming the S&P 500, but remain up more than 10% this year.
Some concerns have arisen in recent months about the pace of Copilot adoption. Research firm Gartner said in August that its survey of 152 IT organizations found that the vast majority had not advanced their Copilot initiatives past the pilot stage.
(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun HK)
