--- title: "Microsoft Debuting AI-Powered Employees for Companies" description: "Microsoft is releasing AI agents that can work on your behalf or assist in your workflow, which some companies are already using." date: "2024-10-23" modified: "2024-10-23" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-ai-powered-employees" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai agents" - "generative ai" - "microsoft" - "the digest" --- # Microsoft Debuting AI-Powered Employees for Companies ![Microsoft is releasing AI agents that can work on your behalf or assist in your workflow, which some companies are already using.]() *\Image: Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty / Futurism\* ## Free Agents Microsoft is releasing a suite of autonomous AI models — or "agents" — that can serve as virtual employees for its customers. Not only that, the company is also giving users the ability to create autonomous agents of their own using its Copilot Studio. These can be tailored as needed, capable of working on your behalf, Microsoft claims, or assisting in your workflow. The products, which were first announced in May, represent Microsoft planting a flag in the world of AI agents, which are supposed to be more self-sufficient than conventional models and are designed to work, hypothetically, without human intervention. "Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world," Microsoft wrote in a [blog post](). "Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous." ## Job Hogs Microsoft views AI agents as a way of supercharging you — or your company's — productivity. The ten ready-made versions it will be releasing via Dynamics 365, Microsoft's suite of business app, can purportedly perform roles such as identifying sales opportunities for a human sales lead or helping customer service teams. If none of these are to your liking, you can always fire up Copilot — which requires no real coding expertise — and design an agent of your own. "These tools are fundamentally changing outsourcing, increasing value and reducing waste," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a London event where the products were revealed, [per *The Guardian*](). (The "reducing waste" claim is pretty rich, since AI's [horrendous carbon footprint]() and [water usage]() are undeniable at this point.) ## What Could Be So far, Microsoft says that several companies are already putting its AI agents to use, including multinational consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which claims a pilot AI agent it designed could speed up lead time by 90 percent and reduce administrative work by 30 percent — the key word there being "could." "I think it's much more of an enabler and an empowerment tool than anything else," Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's corporate vice president, told the *Guardian*, claiming that the agents would eliminate the "mundane, monotonous" aspects of a job. How these AI agents will perform in practice is likely to be a lot jankier, since there's no AI model out there that isn't [prone to hallucination]() and [producing errors](), often unpredictably. Anthropic, which [just announced AI agent capabilities of its own](), admitted that its model still frequently failed to complete relatively simple tasks, like booking and changing flights. Perhaps the AI agents could take the drudgery out of certain jobs, only to replace them with the tedious work of correcting their mistakes. That is, if they aren't eventually used to replace people. **More on AI:** *[Intern Fired by TikTok Owner for Sabotaging Its AI Model]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()