See what I did there? 😉 Microsoft is rolling out new capabilities, enabling you to build autonomous agents – i.e., turning Copilot into Autopilot!

As discussed on Artificial Lawyer (Microsoft To Roll Out ‘Autonomous Agents’, available here), Microsoft is rolling out “a new set of capabilities that enable you to build autonomous agents”, which will “understand the nature of your work and act on your behalf – providing support across business roles, teams, and functions”.

The agents, which will be in ‘public preview’ in late November, will be created through the Microsoft Copilot Studio, and interestingly the tech giant mentioned Monday that “McKinsey & Company, Pets at Home, Thomson Reuters, Clifford Chance” have been using the Studio to become “true AI-first companies. AI-first companies leverage a combination of people, Copilot, and agents to be more efficient, improve customer engagement, and improve employee experience”.

Here are some key aspects of the MS agents (images and GIFs via Microsoft):

Autonomous triggers: Agents can automatically respond to signals across your business and initiate tasks. They can be configured to react to events or triggers without human input that instead originate from various tools, systems, and databases, or are even scheduled to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

Dynamic agent plan: Each business process can have different paths since agents create dynamic plans on the fly to handle and complete tasks. Users can view the underlying logic for each of the agents’ paths, which includes key details, steps, and systems involved. This provides insight into why the agent chose a particular method, its decision process, and context, along with detailed steps, including variables and outputs, which are crucial for debugging.

Activity overview: Trust, dependability, and precision are at the core of establishing agent autonomy in organizations. The true strength of these agents is their ability to monitor activities across real-world scenarios, which in turn enhances business outcomes. To further transparency and accountability, we’re launching an “Activity” tab that enables makers to access a complete log of past agent runs, including progress tracking, identification of blocks, trend analysis, and review of earlier decisions.

As Microsoft stated: “Copilot Studio agents use the latest models, including the OpenAI o1 series, which is being used in the limited private preview for autonomous agents. These models are optimized for advanced reasoning tasks, enhancing the ability to solve complex problems.”

Given some of the challenges with Copilot (including those I covered here and here), are we sure we’re ready to be turning Copilot into Autopilot? I guess we’ll find out!

So, what do you think? Are you excited or apprehensive about Microsoft’s new Copilot Autonomous Agents? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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