Microsoft Corp. is poised to announce a suite of artificial intelligence applications that can perform tasks ranging from email composition to bookkeeping in an aggressive expansion into the increasingly competitive business productivity arena. The technology giant is ramping up its AI offerings, and rivalries with Salesforce Inc., among others, are heating up.
The software giant on Monday announced the addition of ten “autonomous agents” designed to complete tasks from sales to customer support to accounting. The agents, entering “public preview” in December and continuing through early 2025, create new Copilot generative AI capabilities. In connection with its new agents, the company shortly expects Copilot Studio-which allows businesses to build their own agents-to add an ability for these agents to act independently, itself in preview beginning next month.
Jared Spataro, the executive overseeing Microsoft’s suite of workplace AI products, described the agents as akin to smartphone apps but now honed for the AI era. The tools can do things independently, such as researching sales leads or updating customer support tickets after phone calls, freeing employees from drudgery.
“We have identified several areas where employees are spending too much time and too many resources on repetitive tasks,” said Spataro. “By automating those processes, we can drive huge efficiencies.”
However, with its partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft is singularly well-positioned to embed advanced generative AI capabilities into its software. Since early this year, it’s mostly focused on AI features that respond to user prompts—most notably through its Copilot tool, which has been embedded in applications ranging from Word to Outlook.
This new generation of agents will take that to the next level. In simple terms, generative AI uses immense data and software code to execute tasks independently. The creation of such agents is the next step. Many competitors in the market, including ServiceNow Inc., Workday Inc., HubSpot Inc., and SAP SE, also echo that AI agents must be at the center of current propositions.
Salesforce, the prominent CRM company, raised the bar again this week at the annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. It touted its own AI platform, complete with an Agentforce tool that can execute customer service tasks autonomously. The tool is expected to be generally available later this month, priced at about $2 per conversation.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, while attempting to promote its own offering, has shared some less-than-complimentary comments about Microsoft’s Copilot, calling the way it has been delivered “disappointing.” It hasn’t announced pricing for the new agents, which would be part of the Dynamics 365 suite of software. Copilot Studio is part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, available to business customers for $30 a month per user.
But with all this intense competition, the real success will come to whoever manages to deliver products that will meet customer needs, Spataro said.
