Microsoft's Copilot AI now lets you build your own 'autonomous agents'

Microsoft at Deutsche Telekom’s Digital X event on September 19, 2024 in Cologne, Germany. - Photo: Sascha Schuermann (Getty Images)
Microsoft at Deutsche Telekom’s Digital X event on September 19, 2024 in Cologne, Germany. - Photo: Sascha Schuermann (Getty Images)

Microsoft (MSFT) has launched new capabilities for its “personal, private” artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot.

The company announced that users can now build their own autonomous agents in Copilot Studio that can “understand the nature of your work and act on your behalf.” Microsoft customers will be able to create their own autonomous agents in public preview in November, the company announced during its AI Tour in London.

AI agents range from simple prompt-and-response to being fully autonomous, meaning they can “work on behalf of an individual, team, or function” on business processes, Microsoft said. Users will be able to interact with the autonomous agents through Copilot.

Read more: Inside Microsoft’s AI strategy

The company also announced 10 new autonomous agents for its enterprise platform, Dynamics 365. The new agents are designed for workers in “sales, service, finance, and supply chain,” but the company plans to develop more agents, it said. The 10 autonomous agents will become available for public preview later this year and into early 2025, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft said its Copilot Studio autonomous agents will use OpenAI’s new “reasoning” model, o1 — which is in preview — as well as other new AI models “to boost their AI and reasoning abilities.”

“These models offer more precise predictions, enhanced natural language processing, and improved decision-making support,” Microsoft said.

In July, Nvidia (NVDA) chief executive Jensen Huang said the next wave of AI is in the enterprise, where everyone at a company “will have an AI assistant.”

“We hope that we can give every single organization the ability to create their own AIs,” Huang said during a fireside chat at SIGGRAPH, a computer graphics conference. “So everybody would be augmented and have a collaborative AI that could empower them, help them do better work.”

For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.