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Diving brief:

• Microsoft will allow its customers to create autonomous AI agents using Copilot Studio starting next month. the company said Monday.
• Co-pilots can assist or fully automate specific workflows, drawing on business data from systems such as Microsoft 365 Graph, Systems of Record, Dataverse and Fabricthe company said.
• Microsoft also announced 10 new use cases for autonomous agents within its ERP and CRM solution, Dynamics 365. AI agents can review sales opportunities, track supply chain performance, and support customer service teams.

Dive overview:

The first wave of generative AI showed the technology’s ability to respond to queries, thereby supporting human production. A second coming of the technology focuses on specialized autonomous agents that perform end-to-end tasks with little human oversight.

“Think of agents as the new applications of an AI-powered world. » said Jared Spataro, CMO, AI at Work at Microsoftin a Monday blog post. “Each organization will have a constellation of agents, ranging from simple prompt-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate business processes..”

Microsoft said autonomous agents already support workflows at McKinsey & Company, Pets at Home and Thomson Reutersamong other organizations.

Agents produced with Copilot Studio search for signals across enterprise data platforms, systems, and databases. Users can configure the tools to launch tasks on their own, said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president, Business & Industry Copilot, at Microsoft. in a blog post.

Executives are closely tracking vendors’ move toward autonomous AI, with 82% of organizations planning to integrate these tools into the Next 1 to 3 years, according to CapgeminI data. AI software spending is expected to reach nearly $300 billion by 2027, Gartner expects.

Vendors, vying for a share of enterprise AI budgets, have rapidly rolled out new agent-based features in recent months.

In AugustSalesforce unveiled its Agentforce PlatformA collection of generative AI agents focused on customer and employee service. Salesforce-owned Slack also released an Agentforce interface in the collaboration tool.

SAP has integrated agent capabilities into its generative AI assistant Joule earlier this month. Features address financial dispute resolution, bill payments and general ledger updates. Meta also said it is exploring agent use cases for its LLM Llama Family.