Microsoft next month moves to public preview with a Copilot Studio feature that lets users create autonomous AI agents. The agents had been in private preview since the spring, and the tech giant’s move to take them public comes after Salesforce launched its own agentic program in September. Microsoft also has plans to add 10 autonomous agents to Dynamics 365, an enterprise suite geared toward resource planning and customer relationship management. Microsoft announced the news this week at its “AI Tour” event in London. Copilot is Microsoft’s branded AI assistant, while Copilot Studio lets people customize their Copilot assistants.

AI agents are virtual workers that can undertake tasks independently, without human supervision. CNBC writes “they are touted as a major evolution of large language model-based AI from chat interfaces, creating an experience that blends more seamlessly into the background.”

“Agents draw on the context of your work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service,” Microsoft notes in a blog post.

Microsoft provides examples of how companies including Clifford Chance, McKinsey & Company, Pets at Home and Thomson Reuters are using Copilot Studio to create autonomous agents that help “increase revenue, reduce costs and scale impact.”

“We think of these agents as really the apps of the AI era,” Microsoft Corporate VP Bryan Goode tells VentureBeat. “Every line of business system that exists today is going to get reimagined as an agent that sits on top of a copilot.”

“These agents understand the nature of your work and act on your behalf — providing support across business roles, teams, and functions,” Microsoft explains.

To ease people into the agenting era, Microsoft is debuting 10 templated agents as part of Dynamics 365. Focused on sales, service, finance and supply chain, they include a sales qualification agent and a supplier communications agent, as well as customer intent and customer knowledge management agents.

“Microsoft’s new offering appears to be a direct challenge to Salesforce’s Agentforce,” writes VentureBeat, noting that “while Salesforce’s platform relies on its Atlas reasoning engine, Microsoft’s agents are powered by advanced language models and the company’s vast troves of enterprise data.”

Salesforce began leaning into artificial assistance this summer with its AI Cloud productivity suite, and introduced Agentforce last month.