Microsoft Unveils Autonomous Agents to Automate Mundane Workflows

These autonomous agents are task-specific artificial intelligence (AI) models designed to handle work tasks from start to finish.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that its autonomous agents will be available via Copilot Studio next month. These agents are designed to handle work tasks from start to finish.

Accessible to all users, the agents will require a clear set of rules or guidelines to follow, along with any reference documents for the AI to refer to when executing the task. Microsoft has also allowed room for the AI agent’s owners or operators to step in and check the agent’s work along the way or for the agent to notify its owner/operator if it hits a roadblock and isn’t sure what to do next.

“Agents draw on the context of your work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse, and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service,” read a Microsoft announcement.

Several major companies, such as McKinsey & Company and Thomson Reuters, have already tested these agents and reported that lead times could be reduced by 90%, and administrative work slashed by 30%, thanks to the autonomous agents. On its website, Microsoft highlights a sales qualification agent, a supplier communications agent and a customer knowledge management agent, but users will be able to create agents for practically any of their mundane, formulaic workflows.

These autonomous agents will undoubtedly be a positive for anyone who can find a way to automate part of their workflow or anyone who finds themselves doing a repetitive task that can easily be automated. But beyond clear use cases for businesses, Microsoft likely sees these autonomous agents as a way to generate revenue from its AI offerings. As we’ve covered in the past weeks, it’s no secret that AI companies and the AI branches of big tech firms are operating at a loss.

They are spending billions on computing infrastructure and data to train and run their models while not generating enough revenue from those same models to cover their costs. Putting a tool as useful as the autonomous agents behind the $200 per month Copilot Studio subscription may incentivize more businesses, especially corporates, to become paying customers of Microsoft’s AI products, inching the company closer to the profitability its investors are eagerly waiting for in its AI operations.