Microsoft will allow clients to create autonomous artificial intelligence agents beginning in November, the software giant announced on Monday, in its latest effort to capitalize on the rising technology.

The company is promoting autonomous agents as "apps for an AI-driven world," capable of answering client inquiries, detecting sales prospects, and managing inventories. Unlike chatbots, these programs require little human participation.

Other major technology companies, like as Salesforce, have praised the potential of such agents, which some analysts believe might make it easier for enterprises to monetize the billions of dollars they are investing in AI.

Microsoft announced that clients can use Copilot Studio, an application that requires little understanding of computer code, to construct autonomous agents in public preview beginning in November. It employs many AI models created in-house and by OpenAI for the agents.

The company is also releasing ten ready-to-use agents to assist with common operations ranging from supply chain management to expense tracking and client communications.

In one demonstration, McKinsey & Company, which had early access to the tools, produced an agent capable of managing customer inquiries by checking interaction history, identifying the consultant for the task, and scheduling a follow-up meeting.

"The idea is that Copilot (the company's chatbot) is the user interface for AI," Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business and industry Copilot at Microsoft, explained. "Every employee will have a Copilot, their personalized AI agent, and then they will use that Copilot to interface and interact with the sea of AI agents that will be out there."

Investors are putting pressure on tech firms to show returns on their huge AI investments. Microsoft shares declined 2.8% in the September quarter, underperforming the S&P 500, but are still more than 10% higher for the year.

Some concerns have been raised in recent months concerning the rate of Copilot adoption, with research company Gartner reporting in August that the great majority of 152 IT businesses had not pushed their Copilot programs beyond the pilot level.