Microsoft will allow customers to create AI agents for routine tasks starting in November

:Microsoft will allow its customers to build autonomous artificial intelligence agents starting next month in its latest effort to take advantage of the booming technology amid growing investor scrutiny over its heavy AI investments.

The company is positioning autonomous agents – programs that need little human intervention, unlike chatbots – as “applications for an AI-driven world” that can handle customer inquiries, identify sales opportunities and manage inventory.

Other large technology companies, such as Salesforce, have also praised the potential of these agents, tools that, according to some analysts, could provide companies with an easier path to monetizing the billions of dollars they invest in 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 several AI models developed internally and by OpenAI for agents.

The company is also introducing 10 ready-to-use agents that can help with routine tasks ranging from supply chain management to expense tracking and customer communications.

In a demonstration, 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 task 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 Copilot business and industry at Microsoft, told Reuters.

“Each employee will have a Copilot, their personalized AI agent, and then they will use that Copilot to interact and engage with the sea of ​​AI agents that will be out there.”

Tech giants are facing pressure to show returns on their big investments in AI. Microsoft shares fell 2.8% in the September quarter, underperforming the S&P 500, but remain up more than 10% for the year.

Some concerns have risen in recent months about the pace of adoption of Copilot, with research firm Gartner saying in August that its survey of 152 IT organizations showed the vast majority had not progressed their Copilot initiatives beyond the pilot phase. .