Microsoft will soon offer businesses and developers the ability to use its AI-powered assistant, Copilot, as a virtual employee for routine work tasks. Instead of functioning only as a chatbot, Copilot will monitor mailboxes, automate various tasks, and perform data entry – all of which company employees currently handle manually.
Enhanced Automation Features
“We very quickly realized that the operation of Copilot only in the communication format today extremely limits its capabilities,” explained Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for business applications and platforms. “Instead of Copilot waiting for someone to talk to it, what if it could be made more active and given the ability to work in the background on automation tasks?” Copilot’s new features have only been released to a small group of testers so far, but they will be available in a public preview of Copilot Studio later this year.
Companies will be able to create Copilot agents capable of taking on the functions of technical support, employee onboarding, and much more. These agents will be triggered by specific events and will work with the company’s own data. Microsoft describes the mechanism as follows: “Imagine that you are a new employee. Proactive Copilot greets you, reviews information from HR, answers your questions, introduces you to your partner, trains and sets deadlines, helps with forms, and arranges meetings for the first week. Now HR and other employees will be able to carry out their regular tasks without the hassle of administration.”
Addressing Concerns and Ensuring Collaboration
Such automation mechanisms raise questions about the potential loss of human jobs and concerns about the future development of AI. Mr. Lamanna emphasizes that Copilot agents will relieve employees from repetitive and monotonous tasks, such as data entry, but will not completely replace them. According to Microsoft, the goal is to free employees from boring, monotonous tasks while maintaining the importance of human judgment and collaboration in the workflow.
Microsoft has also protected Copilot from potential glitches, such as AI hallucinations, by building controls into Copilot Studio. This ensures that the AI agent acts within defined instructions and operations. Data transfer mechanisms to a local copy of Copilot—from public websites, SharePoint, OneDrive, and other resources—have been simplified. While Copilot’s focus in 2023 was data mining and summarizing user-generated content, this year Microsoft’s AI focus is on customization, notes NIXsolutions. Previously, Copilot focused on individual interactions, but now it will work more with groups of users. We’ll keep you updated on the new developments as Copilot’s capabilities continue to expand.
This year, Team Copilot capabilities will be updated for the Microsoft corporate messenger. The AI will be able to manage agendas during meetings, take notes, moderate department chats, help set tasks, and track deadlines in Microsoft Planner. These advancements indicate that Microsoft is striving not just for automation but also for enhancing collaborative work environments.