Microsoft CEO opened a company conference in Chicago discussing the future of its artificial intelligence business. The focus is on developing AI 'agents' that can perform more useful tasks on behalf of users. However, the high cost of building and running AI tools has raised concerns among investors about the technology's potential.
Last month, Microsoft announced its vision of a future where every organization will utilize a variety of agents, from basic prompt-and-response to fully autonomous ones. These autonomous agents could handle tasks such as reviewing customer returns and checking shipping invoices to prevent supply-chain errors.
Microsoft's annual Ignite conference, aimed at big business customers, is highlighting the shift towards 'agentic AI.' This move comes as users are recognizing limitations in existing large language models powering chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot, which excel at specific writing tasks.
Tech companies are now focusing on developing AI tools capable of long-range planning, reasoning, web access, computer control, and autonomous task performance on behalf of users. Salesforce, a key player in the AI space, has its own 'Agentforce' service that leverages AI for sales, marketing, and other functions.
However, Salesforce CEO has criticized Microsoft's rebranding of Copilot as 'agents,' calling it a 'panic mode' move. He labeled Copilot as inaccurate and a data security risk, suggesting that Microsoft's flagship AI assistant has not met expectations.
