Microsoft is introducing autonomous artificial intelligence agents, or virtual employees, that can perform tasks such as handling client queries and identifying sales leads, as the tech sector strives to show investors that the AI boom can produce indispensable products.
The US tech company is giving customers the ability to build their own AI agents as well as releasing 10 off-the-shelf bots that can carry out a range of roles including supply chain management and customer service.
Early adopters of the Copilot Studio product, which launches next month, include the blue chip consulting firm McKinsey, which is building an agent to process new client inquiries by carrying out tasks such as scheduling follow-up meetings. Other early users include law firm Clifford Chance and retailer Pets at Home.
Microsoft is flagging AI agents, which carry out tasks without human intervention, as an example of the technology’s ability to increase productivity – a measure of economic efficiency, or the amount of output generated by a worker for each hour worked.
Microsoft chief executive, Satya Nadella, who disclosed the AI agents at a company event in London, said the tool would reduce “drudgery” and raise productivity by freeing up time to carry out more valuable tasks.
“These tools are fundamentally changing outsourcing, increasing value and reducing waste,” he said.
Nadella described Copilot Studio, which does not require coding expertise from its users, as a “no-code way for you to be able to build agents”. Microsoft is powering the agents with several AI models developed in-house and by OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
Microsoft is also developing an AI agent that can carry out transactions on behalf of users. The company’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, has said he has seen “stunning demos” where the agent makes a purchase independently, but that it has also suffered “car crash moments” in development. Sulyeman added, nonetheless, that an agent with these capabilities will emerge “in quarters, not years”.
Asked about fears of AI’s impact on employment, Charles Lamanna, a corporate vice-president at Microsoft, told the Guardian that agents would do away with the “mundane, monotonous” aspects of a job.
“I think it’s much more of an enabler and an empowerment tool than anything else,” he said.
Lamanna said the advent of AI tools such as agents in the modern office environment is comparable to the arrival of personal computers several decades ago.
“The personal computer didn’t show up on every desk to begin with but eventually it was on every desk because it brought so much capability and information to the fingertips of every employee,” he said.
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“We think that AI is going to have the same type of journey. It’s showing up in a subset of departments and processes, but it’s only a matter of time till it shows up to all parts of an organisation.”
Andrew Rogoyski, a director at the Institute for People-Centred AI, at the University of Surrey, said AI agents could help tech companies to produce a return for investors who backed the technology strongly. In June, Goldman Sachs asked if a $1tn investment in AI over the next few years will “ever pay off”.
“AI companies have consumed a lot of investment money and need to generate some returns,” said Rogoyski. “Assistive agents is a way of showing everyday benefits, although how much revenue these will generate is an open question.”
However, he issued a warning that agents have been discussed as a concept for years but that “we’ve yet to deliver an agent that is as capable as a human worker”.