Microsoft said Copilot agents are generally available in a move that provides enterprises agentic AI to automate business processes while preserving that Copilot brand it's known for.
In a blog post aimed at Salesforce's Dreamforce 2024 conference, Microsoft said it will add agent builder to Copilot Studio. Copilot agents are designed to be fully autonomous and run in the background to carry out tasks.
With Salesforce push, AI Agents, agentic AI overload looms
Microsoft said Copilot agents can be created in BizChat or SharePoint and then mentioned in various apps such as Teams or Outlook. Copilot agents and agent builder in BizChat will roll out in the weeks ahead with SharePoint agent builder in preview in October.
Most enterprises vendors have positioned agents to be a different more advanced version of copilots. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently outlined Agentforce and said the platform will be the un-Copilot. "So many customers are so disappointed in what they bought from Microsoft Copilot because they're not getting the accuracy and the response that they want. Microsoft has disappointed so many customers with AI," Benioff said.
Microsoft will beg to differ--especially since it rolled out numerous Copilot enhancements even with its AI agent announcements.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said Microsoft has an interesting Copilot vs. agents line to walk.
"Microsoft tries to get in its agents before Salesforce.
Microsoft keeps pushing for agents, and interestingly agents are there to help Copilots, which fits the Microsoft vision, but does not address the Copilot inflation that Microsoft users are battling with day in and day out. Microsoft will have to create an uber AI persona. Maybe it will be the comeback of Cortana?"
In the meantime, Microsoft announced a bevy of enhancements for Microsoft 365 Copilot including:
- Copilot Pages, a collaboration canvas for multiple AI copilots. Microsoft is pitching Copilot Pages as a way to turn genAI artifacts and make them reusable with the ability to edit, add and share AI generated content.
- Copilot in Excel is generally available and Copilot in Excel with Python is in public preview.
- Copilot on PowerPoint with Narrative builder is generally available as is Brand manager to ensure presentations are on brand.
- Copilot in Teams will combine meeting transcripts and chats to provide a complete picture of the meeting.
- Copilot in Outlook will prioritize emails and messages with a concise summary.
