Microsoft Is Developing New AI Agents for Enterprises That Behave as Independent Users

Microsoft is developing a new class of artificial intelligence (AI) agents for enterprises that can operate as independent users. The Redmond-based tech giant has listed the upcoming tool in its product roadmap for Microsoft 365. The company says, unlike typical agents that are meant for a specific purpose, these will be general-purpose embodied AI, complete with a unique digital identity, that can perform various tasks autonomously. The company has touted a release date of November; however, it is unclear when these agents will be released for its enterprise users.

Microsoft Is Building General-Purpose AI Agents

In its Microsoft 365 Roadmap page, the tech giant has now added a new product dubbed Agentic Users. These are currently under development with a tentative rollout estimated for November. The company says these AI agents will be available in the M365 Agent Store and Teams.

A description of the product calls it “a new class of AI that operates as independent users within the enterprise workforce.” What that means is that these AI agents will not be part of a particular system or operation, like most agentic tools, and instead, they can perform a wide range of tasks independently. To allow them to move from one software and platform to another, the Agentic Users will feature an identity and dedicated access to organisational systems and applications, Microsoft said.

Coming to what these agents can do, the company says these tools can attend meetings, edit documents, communicate via email and chat, and perform other tasks autonomously. These agents will also have the ability to collaborate with humans as well as other agents.

Rich Gibbons, a Microsoft licensing specialist (via The Register), mentioned in a blog post that he has viewed documentation provided to M365 admins. The documents are said to call the Agentic Users A365 and highlight that admins will assign the required license at the time of approval, and no additional license will be required. “So there will be at least one A365 license, but the word ‘required' suggests, to me at least, that we will see a range of A365 licenses for different ‘roles',” he added.

Another admin, João Ferreira, saw the same documents and claimed that these AI agents will have their own email address, Teams account, entry in enterprise directories, and a place in the org chart.