If 2024 was the year that artificial intelligence chatbots became more useful, 2025 will be the year that AI agents begin to take over. You can think of agents as powerful AI bots that can perform actions on your behalf, such as retrieving data from incoming emails and importing it into another app.
You’ve probably already heard the agent groan. Companies from Nvidia (NVDA) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) to Microsoft (MSFT) and Salesforce (CRM) are increasingly talking about agent AI (a fancy way of saying AI agents) and claims to change both ways. Consumers think of AI technology.
The goal is to eliminate tedious and time-consuming tasks such as filing expense reports, which is a bane in my professional life. Not only will there be more AI agents, but there will also be more big tech companies developing AI agents.
Companies using these say they see changes based on their own internal metrics. According to Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Business and Industrial Copilot, the Windows maker is already seeing improvements in both its responsiveness to IT issues and its sales results.
According to Lamanna, Microsoft employees’ IT self-help success rate increased by 36% and revenue per seller increased by 9.4%. The company has also seen faster resolution times for HR cases.
Like any new technology, using AI agents will take some getting used to. But if it lives up to the high expectations set by tech companies, it could prove to be an impressive new use case for generative AI that will appeal to many users.
“If you can get very quick, accurate, very meaningful and helpful answers right away, people’s habits can start to change,” Bob O’Donnell, president and principal analyst at TECHnaracy Research, told Yahoo Finance. spoke. “But changing people’s habits takes time.”
The AI chatbot/AI co-pilot/AI agent discussion can be a little confusing. After all, generative AI chatbots still feel like a new technology, and right now we’re already moving into the next big technology. However, all three functions are part of the same overall system.
Ray Smith, vice president of AI agents at Microsoft, said that AI co-pilots can be thought of as the main interface for interacting with chatbots and assistants. It’s like a home screen for different AI needs.
You can ask your chatbot or assistant to complete various tasks, and it will contact an AI agent with the appropriate capabilities.
If that sounds complicated, here’s a simple example: Suppose you want to book a flight. When you tell the chatbot to check available flights, it uses a variety of AI agents to check your flight preferences, calendar, seat availability, and possibly even financial apps to help you with your budget. See if you can get a flight within. Check out the range and then come back with some recommended flights.
story continues
