Let the AI agent do the work: Microsoft's new world of work

"It's Monday morning and the caffeine isn't working yet" – Susanna Ray, Microsoft Source Writer, knows the remedy: simply let the new AI agents do the work. In future, all you have to do is ask them to take on tasks while you can take a second sip of coffee and take care of the team's long-term strategy. "How AI will change the way we work" is the title of Ray's blog post, which was published for Ignite 2024. The former journalist writes such articles professionally for Microsoft.

In future, AI agents will take on tasks such as answering customer queries, finding errors in the supply chain or filling out delivery notes. Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer, Jared Spataro, refers to agents as the new apps. They are each responsible for specific tasks and are enriched with the relevant knowledge. AI agents are available as ready-made versions in Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, and in future they can also be developed from scratch in Copilot Studio. Programming knowledge is not required for basic agent tasks.

Microsoft already provides ready-made AI agents

Agents are now available in Sharepoint, where they can process content. The new employee self-service agents are also added to BizChat, the business chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot. There they can answer questions about their employer, for example about travel expense reports. A moderator agent is designed to help teams make meetings more effective. It summarizes content that employees can work on. We do not know what the difference is to the copilot summaries. This facilitator agent is initially only available as a preview. The project manager agent, which can create and manage a project plan, is also a preview.

The interpreter agent speaks nine languages and can translate in real time. Anyone who wants to can provide their own voice, which the AI agent then uses to speak for other participants in a meeting in the other language. This agent is due to be released next year.

To ensure that nobody loses track of all the agents, there will be a library of agents in Copilot Studio in future. Agents can also be created there that act autonomously, i.e. they do not have to be prompted to do anything. For example, they can reply to emails – almost like an automatic out-of-office message, only with different conditions. For the development of agents and AI applications in Copilot Studio and via Azure AI, there are of course also numerous new options and tools available, which were presented at Microsoft Ignite. These include the ability to upload images and give agents voice capabilities. In addition to the AI agents, Microsoft also presented new features for its Copilot assistant.

(emw)