Microsoft is allowing the development of autonomous AI agents next month

LONDON – Microsoft will allow businesses to start creating their own autonomous artificial intelligence agents from next month, taking the fight back Salesforcewhich introduced a self-configurable agent AI tool in September.

At its “AI Tour” event in London on Monday, Microsoft announced plans to allow organizations to create their own autonomous agents in Copilot Studio, the US tech giant’s platform for creating and creating “copilot” assistants.

The agent was previously available in private preview after Microsoft announced its launch in May. Starting next month, they will go into public preview, meaning more organizations can start building their own AI agents.

AI agents can act as virtual workers that can perform a series of tasks without supervision. They are said to be the main evolution of big language model-based AI from the chat interface, creating an experience that blends seamlessly into the background.

In addition to adding the ability to create autonomous agents in Copilot Studio, Microsoft said it will also launch 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365, its 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.

Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of modern work and business applications, on Monday presented an example of an AI agent developed at the consulting firm McKinsey.

The agent is shown when discussing the email to find out what the communication is, check its history, map it to industry standard terms, then find the right person in the company to take the next step before writing and summarizing a reply.

It may seem like “magic,” but the company can develop its own AI agents just by using human language, not programming language, according to Spataro.

“We’re excited about it because of the business value it brings,” he said, adding that McKinsey found it could cut lead times by 90%.

Microsoft is doubling down on AI agents as competition heats up in the hot artificial intelligence space.

Last month, at the annual Dreamforce show in San Francisco, Salesforce showed off a new platform called Agentforce, which allows enterprise organizations to create their own AI agents.

Zahra Bahrololoumi, CEO of Salesforce UK and Ireland, criticized the AI ​​assistant copilot model for not serving the company’s needs well.

“All these copilots are activated on the edge, or in email – they are not connected or grounded in the context of customer data,” Bahrololoumi told CNBC in an interview earlier this month. “How do we represent the company accurately and responsibly? No.”

“I think we’re not going to see a lot of copilots for corporate AI activities,” he added. “I’m not saying copilots will not exist for other purposes. But in the context of the company, for autonomous companies to be able to plan, execute and take action – you are no longer in Copilot there”.

Microsoft declined to comment on Bahrololoumi’s remarks when contacted by CNBC.

Microsoft and Salesforce have a dispute. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has asked European regulators to investigate Microsoft’s deal to buy LinkedIn, saying it violated competition rules.

Separately, Microsoft also announced on Monday that it has awarded a five-year deal with the UK government to offer public sector organizations access to AI tools.

Through an agreement with the Crown Commercial Service, the UK government’s procurement agency, Microsoft said it will allow public sector organizations to access the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity tools, the Azure cloud platform and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a service offered by the tech giant that embeds generative AI into its suite of productivity apps.