Microsoft will soon allow businesses and developers to build AI-powered Copilots that can work like virtual employees and perform tasks automatically. Instead of Copilot sitting idle waiting for queries, it will be able to monitor email inboxes and automate tasks or data entry that employees normally have to do manually. It is a big change in the behavior of Copilot, which the industry commonly calls AI agents or the ability for chatbots to intelligently perform complex tasks autonomously. “We very quickly realized that constraining Copilot to just being conversational was extremely limiting in what Copilot can do today,” explains Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business apps and platforms at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge. “Instead of having a Copilot that waits until someone chats with it, what if you could make your Copilot more proactive and allow it to work in the background on automated tasks?”[1]
Microsoft is previewing this new capability today to a very small group of early access testers ahead of a public preview inside Copilot Studio later this year. Businesses can create a Copilot agent to handle IT help desk service tasks, employee onboarding, and more. “Copilots are evolving from copilots that work with you to copilots that work for you,” says Microsoft in a blog post.
This type of automation will naturally lead to questions about job losses and fears about where AI heads next. Lamanna argues that Copilot agents can remove repetitive and mundane tasks, like data entry, instead of replacing jobs entirely. “What makes a job, what makes a role? It’s a bunch of different tasks; generally, it’s many diverse and heterogeneous tasks. If someone did one thing repeatedly, it probably would have already been automated by current technology,” says Lamanna. “We think with Copilot and Copilot Studio, some tasks will be automated completely... but the good news is most of the things that are automated are things that nobody wants to do.”
Microsoft’s argument that it only wants to reduce the boring bits of your job sounds idealistic for now. Still, with tech companies constantly fighting for AI dominance, we’re increasingly on the verge of more than basic automation. Lamanna believes human judgment and collaboration are still important parts of getting work done and that not everything will suit automation.
There are also still many problems with generative AI right now, especially around hallucinations, where it confidently makes stuff up. Microsoft says it has built several controls into Copilot Studio for this AI agent push so that Copilot doesn’t simply go rogue and automate tasks freely.
You can build Microsoft’s Copilot agents with the ability to flag certain scenarios for humans to review, which will be useful for more complex queries and data. This means Copilot should operate within the confines of what has been defined and the instructions and actions associated with these automated tasks. Microsoft is also making it easier for businesses to bring their data into their custom Copilot, with data connections to public websites, SharePoint, OneDrive, and more. This is part of a broader effort inside Microsoft to make Copilot more than just a chatbot that generates things. “Copilot in 2023 and Microsoft focused on searching over your data, summarizing your content, and generating new content. We think Copilot in 2024 will be very focused on customization,” says Lamanna. New Copilot extensions will enable part of this customization, allowing developers to build connectors that extend Copilot across the line of business systems.
Microsoft also wants Copilot to work with groups of people more instead of these one-to-one experiences that have existed over the past year. A new Team Copilot feature will allow the assistant to manage meeting agendas and notes, moderate lengthy team chats, or help assign tasks and track deadlines in Microsoft Planner. Microsoft plans to preview Team Copilot later this year.
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/21/24158030/microsoft-copilot-ai-automation-agents
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