Microsoft Will Let Its Users Build Autonomous AI Agents with Copilot Studio

• From November, Microsoft will let its users create autonomous AI agents that can help them with their day-to-day tasks.
• These agents can be built from the Copilot Studio without any coding knowledge.
• For beginners, 10 pre-configured AI agents proficient in expense tracking, supply chain management and client communication have already been created by the company.

Starting next month, Microsoft will let its users build autonomous artificial intelligence agents to help with their routine tasks with little to no intervention. These tasks include handling inventory, sales leads, and managing customer queries.

The news was announced today at Microsoft's AI Tour" event in London. Detailing how users can get started, the company said that the AI bots can be built using Copilot Studio. The best part is that anyone can do it - there's no need for any technical or coding knowledge.

To further help beginners, Microsoft has already created 10 pre-configured, ready-to-use AI models that can help with expense tracking, supply chain management, and customer communication.

McKinsey & Co, which has early access to the tools, showed a demo in which it created an AI agent that can handle client inquiries. The agent was able to check the communication history with the client, find the right consultant for the task and schedule a follow-up meeting.

Why Is Microsoft Launching Copilot Studios?

After AI became popular a couple of years ago, many companies have been pouring funds into adopting this new technology. So it's finally time for them to get a return on it.

As per its calculations, Microsoft's autonomous agents will help businesses save over $50 million in costs annually, which is similar to hiring 187 full-time employees.

Explaining the ultimate goal, Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business and industry Copilot at Microsoft said The idea is that Copilot is the user interface for AI."

He goes on to explain that soon, every employee will have Copilot as their personalized AI assistant and they will use Copilot's interface to interact and use the other numerous AI agents that they have created.

Simply put, every employee will have an army of AI agents under the umbrella of the main AI agent, which is Copilot.

While all of this does sound promising, there's a major concern.

• Copilot's adoption rate has been slower than expected. In a survey conducted by research firm Gartner in August, the majority of the 152 IT organizations that participated have not gone beyond the first stage of Copilot setup.
• The adoption of Windows 11 (which has Microsoft Copilot) has also been slow. The vast majority of the users are still on Windows 10 and other previous versions despite the company stopping support for some of them.

While new features like these might entice some users to make the switch, maybe Microsoft should also look into other hurdles that could be stopping organizations from adopting Copilot.

Doing so is even more important right now because Salesforce, a popular CRM tool, is also planning to launch similar tools. If it does, Microsoft will have some tough competition.

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