Microsoft Launches World's Largest 'Autonomous AI Intelligence Body,' 100,000 Enterprise Workflows Transformed

Just moments ago, Microsoft announced the world's largestAI AgentEcosystem: 100,000 companies have now created intelligences through Copilot Studio.

Microsoft is quietly changing the game for enterprise AI!

Now that Microsoft has quietly assembled the world's largest ecosystem of AI intelligences, the

Since its launch, more than 100,000 companies, have created their own AI intelligences using Copilot Studio.

For example, McKinsey reduced the project intake process from 20 days to just 2 days by automating the process of assigning intelligences; Pets at Home deployed fraud prevention intelligences in less than two weeks, saving millions of dollars annually ......

"This growth rate far exceeds our expectations and the performance of any other cutting-edge technology we've released," reveals Charles Lamanna, head of Intelligent Bodies at Microsoft, "a 2x increase in just one quarter."

At yesterday's Ignite conference, Microsoft was even more heavy-handed in announcing that companies can now use any of the 1,800 LLM models in the Azure catalog in their intelligences! This means that Microsoft is no longer dependent on OpenAI for exclusive models.

Also new from Microsoft are autonomous AI intelligences that can work independently, detecting events and coming to engage in our complex workflows with minimal human intervention.

These AI intelligences can reason autonomously and also operate software that performs specific tasks. From there, the productivity of businesses will go a step further.

Copilot

Word

In Word, Copilot will help you find relevant sources and additional content to draft.

When starting to write a new document, Copilot finds relevant documents, emails, and meeting notes and creates a draft based on them. As you write the document, Copilot displays these sources throughout the document and gives you the option to keep the citations in the draft.

The feature has been available in the web version of Word since November and is rolling out on desktops in early 2025.

Copilot will also help you improve the quality of your documents by providing suggestions for improvement based on tone, structure, and storytelling. This feature is currently available in public preview.

Simply type a prompt into the Copilot chat pane and it can intelligently retrieve and add relevant images from SharePoint organizational repositories in a document, as well as generate relevant new images using DALL-E 3. The feature will be available this month.

Excel

Whether you're creating a project budget, an inventory tracker, or a sales report, creating a compliant spreadsheet from scratch can be both intimidating and time-consuming.

Now, Copilot can help you out. Just tell Copilot what you want to create and Copilot will build a template based on your needs. The feature will begin to be pushed out to Windows and web users with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses by the end of the year.

For example, you can quickly create a table for your company's sales team.Copilot can add columns, apply conditional formatting, and even change the table's color on command. As soon as you're happy with the table, you can insert it into the page and continue using Copilot.

In Excel, Copilot can now reference Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files from internal corporate data.

If you ask Copilot to list the announcements in a drafted press release in a Word document in Excel, it will give us a list to insert into a new table or copy and paste into an existing table.

While focusing on workflow, we can then easily access corporate information, such as having Copilot provide a list of all the direct employees of a specific manager to insert into a spreadsheet.

Additionally, we can seamlessly perform web searches in Excel's Copilot to find dates, statistics, or a table of exchange rates for each country and copy and paste that information into your own table without disrupting your workflow.

You can also find and import tables from Excel files in natural language.

For text-intensive Excel spreadsheets, such as customer feedback and survey results, Copilot's text analytics feature can help you understand the data in greater depth. Simply ask Copilot to summarize your text data, and it will also include citations to help you understand the source of the data.

Copilot can also categorize and sort text data by topic, helping you analyze unstructured text data more quickly. For example, if you have thousands of customer reviews, Copilot can categorize them into topics such as quality, service, and price, helping you quickly identify topics that need further attention.

You can also insert these themes into new columns in the table, retain the results of the analysis, and create pivot tables and charts to visualize the number and trends of the themes.

PowerPoint

Similar to some of Word's features, Copilot also supports optimizing text and inserting images.

In addition, Copilot's Presentation Translator feature can translate presentations into 40 languages with text boxes, shapes, tables, charts, speaker notes, comments and text in Smart-Art.

Copilot automatically generates speaker notes for all slides, giving you a solid first draft that you can further modify as needed.

With simple prompts and a Word file, Copilot's Narrative Builder can draft a first draft of a PowerPoint based on them.

What's New in Copilot Pages

In September, Microsoft released Copilot Pages - a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration.

In addition to text, Pages now supports more content types such as code, interactive charts, tables, graphs, and mathematical formulas.

These components can be created in BizChat based on web pages or work data, and they can be interacted with and dynamically modified in real time, able to stay synchronized when shared through Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Teams, etc.

Copilot Pages also adds multi-page support, so you can create multiple new pages within a single chat session, or add content from multiple chat sessions to a single page.

In addition, you can edit and share Pages on your mobile device, enabling multi-person collaboration on multiple ends.

All of these features will be officially rolled out to Pages in early 2025.

Other members of the Microsoft family bucket

In Outlook, with Copilot, users can schedule meetings using natural language.Copilot also helps you draft meeting agendas, including summaries and key points.

In OneNote, with Copilot Chat, you can summarize the content of your notes, create a task list, or rewrite the content of your notes through natural language commands.

Additionally, Copilot helps you organize your notebook chapters in seconds. Open Copilot in the OneNote app, type "Organize this chapter" and Copilot will automatically organize your notebook pages.

And Facilitator intelligences will support Teams meeting room functionality in early 2025, capable of taking and displaying notes in real time for all attendees in and out of the room.

Facilitator Smartbody also supports the feature of speaker recognition. This feature will support a wider range of meeting scenarios, from Teams meeting rooms to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) meeting rooms, with the ability to recognize voices and people in the room so that each speaker is clearly visible. Speaker recognition also enables Copilot, Facilitator, and Intelligent Meeting Review to correctly identify speakers, ensuring that minutes and action items are accurately attributed.

In addition, Microsoft has introduced a new AI translator that simulates the speaker's voice to provide near real-time voice translation in nine languages on the Teams platform, including Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Spanish.

The feature is currently being tested with a small group of users and is expected to be widely available to accounts with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses in 2025.

Copilot Studio

As mentioned in the opening post, Microsoft's update to Copilot Studio can be quite heavy.

1. Extended knowledge management functionality

Developers can use the latest generative models, update and reference third-party data sources in real time, and utilize the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) feature to enhance the quality of their intelligences.

2. New analytics

Developers can filter charts based on specific results to understand key performance indicators (KPIs) and customer satisfaction.

3. New voice and image functions

Speech solutions can now be incorporated, including interactive voice response (IVR) systems; or intelligences can be deployed into applications that allow users to interact with intelligences via voice. Users can not only communicate with the intelligences by voice, but can also upload an image and ask the intelligences to analyze and answer questions about that image.

4. Customized Autonomous Intelligence Body (AIB) functionality in preview phase

Developers can create intelligences that don't require human prompting, that are ready to respond when they detect a specific event, and that trigger a series of business operations.

5. Microsoft 365 Agents SDK enters preview phase

With the SDK, developers can now extend the functionality of intelligences through code to build enterprise-grade, scalable, multi-channel intelligences.

knowledge management

Copilot Studio is expanding its knowledge management and RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) capabilities. This feature is in preview.

The platform introduces connector functionality to access a whole new set of knowledge sources. Developers can now enable intelligences to access real-time knowledge from multiple third-party data sources such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.Copilot Studio semantically indexes only the metadata of these tables, eliminating the need for data movement, to help answer complex questions from these third-party sources.

You can also mark certain data sources as 'authoritative' to ensure that intelligences prioritize the use of this data to provide reliable correspondences.

In addition to accessing new knowledge, Copilot Studio uses the latest GPT model and optimizes the RAG strategy for high quality answers.

With the Advanced Knowledge Tuning feature, developers have better control over data sources. For each question, developers can now clearly see which data sources are being used and which are still unanswered. The Knowledge Tuning feature also suggests additional knowledge to add from the organization and provides a guided approach to filtering and prioritizing knowledge sources.

Before the smart body goes live, developers can also test it to see how accurate its response is.

In addition, the platform provides detailed analytics, such as data source utilization, to understand whether certain data sources need to be adjusted.

Copilot Studio's knowledge management capabilities also integrate with Azure AI Foundry to support more complex and customized scenarios.

Developers typically store large amounts of data in Azure AI.

This data can now be used directly as a knowledge source for Copilot Studio, where search operations can be performed on vectorized indexes built in Azure AI Search to access unstructured data.

Developers can also combine this data with customized RAG strategies in Copilot Studio for more accurate results. By connecting all data sources, organizations can ensure that intelligences are more closely aligned with their business data, providing specific and high-quality responses.

That's not all. more advanced Azure AI features have been introduced in Copilot Studio. Developers will soon be able to access models in the Azure AI model catalog, which includes over 1,800 models. They will also be able to access and invoke their own custom fine-tuned models directly in Copilot Studio.

new analysis

With new analytics capabilities, developers are able to understand how their generative AI systems are performing.

In addition to the analysis of the previously mentioned knowledge base data sources, the top-level metrics used to measure the overall performance of a system or business have been completely upgraded. These metrics will be better, more efficient and able to demonstrate trends over time.

Developers can filter charts based on specific results to understand key performance indicators (KPIs) and customer satisfaction.

Voice and Image

Copilot Studio now includes voice capabilities. Organizations can integrate intelligentsia into interactive voice response (IVR) systems, transforming otherwise rigid voice menus into flexible AI assistants.

By simply specifying the source of knowledge, intelligent IVRs can easily respond to a large number of complex questions on the phone, significantly reducing the number of issues that escalate to manual handling. These intelligent voice assistants also recognize speech, handle user interruptions, detect mutes, and re-prompt.

Not limited to IVR systems, voice-enabled intelligences can also be embedded in applications, standalone terminals, concierge systems and other scenarios.

For example, a hotel's app could use a Copilot smart body with access to the appropriate knowledge base to act as a dedicated in-room concierge to provide attentive assistance to guests.

In addition to voice functionality, Copilot Studio has added image processing capabilities.

Users can now upload images and ask questions to the intelligentsia. For example, "Why is my bill higher this month?"

In addition, image uploads can be used for data entry. A salesperson can say to the smart body, "Add these handwritten notes to the CRM system."

autonomous intelligence

The ability to customize autonomous intelligences was announced back at the end of October, and now the preview has finally opened.

Autonomous intelligences can automate those complex and time-consuming business tasks independently on behalf of a user, team or organization.

Developers can design intelligences to detect specific events (e.g., new email arrivals) that are ready to respond and use generative AI to trigger a series of actions to automate complex business tasks.

For example, an intelligent body may perform the following operations in one breath:

1. Assessing mail intent

2. Find sender details and account information

3. Viewing of past correspondence

4. Inspection of stockpiles

5. Responding to senders and asking for preferences

6. Take appropriate action to close work orders

Developers can either build autonomous intelligences from scratch or configure pre-built intelligences with specific features in Copilot Studio.

Smart Body SDK

The Microsoft 365 Agents SDK is currently available in preview.

This means that Copilot Studio developers can now extend the functionality of intelligences through code to build enterprise-grade, scalable, multi-channel intelligences.

Developers have complete flexibility to connect to any AI service, including Azure AI Foundry, Semantic Kernel, Copilot Studio, and more.

Intelligentsia built using the SDK can also be deployed to multiple channels such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Teams, the Web, and more than a dozen third-party messaging platforms.

Two customized chips built for data processing and security

At the conference, Microsoft unveiled two chips designed for data center infrastructure: the Azure Integrated HSM and the Azure Boost DPU.

The Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft's first data processing unit designed for data-centric workloads with high efficiency and low power consumption.

Microsoft expects future Azure servers with DPUs to run at four times the performance of existing servers, but also consume three times the power.

The chip's design may have its origins in Funcible, the DPU maker that Microsoft acquired last December, for $190 million.

The other chip is Azure Integrated HSM, which is built for security.

It is possible to place the pre-signing key and the encryption key in a secure module without affecting performance, or increasing latency.

It is Microsoft's second security chip after Pluton, a consumer-centric chip built into Intel, AMD and Qualcomm processors.

Starting next year, Azure Integrated HSM will be equipped on every server in Microsoft's data centers to increase the protection of Azure hardware for confidential and general-purpose workloads.

Mini PC only $2,500, but can't run native apps

On the hardware front, Microsoft has released a PC that claims to be smaller than a Mac mini, the Windows 365 Link, for $349 ($2,526).

The mini PC is scheduled to launch next year and work with Windows 365 cloud services.

That is, it will not run any local content on the device.

Link is designed as a compact, fanless, easy-to-use cloud computer that connects to monitors and external devices.

With Windows 365 services, organizations can give employees access to virtual machines that exist in the cloud that can be securely streamed to multiple devices.

It boots up in seconds, can instantly wake up from sleep, and uses its own chip to process video from Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex.

It has two USB-A 3.2 ports and one USB-C 3.2 port, as well as a DisplayPort and HDMI port and Ethernet connectivity. On the front, there's a USB-A 3.2 port that also includes Wi-Fi 6 E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity.

References:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/copilot-studio/copilot-studio-is-enhancing-its-platform-with-knowledge-improvements-azure-ai-integration-and-more/

https://venturebeat.com/ai/microsoft-quietly-assembles-the-largest-ai-agent-ecosystem-and-no-one-else-is-close/

This article is from WeChat"New Zeal."Author: HYZj