From Microsoft to Nvidia, AI agents will arrive in 2025

If 2024 was the year that artificial intelligence chatbots became more and more useful, 2025 will be the year that AI agents start to take over. You can think of agents as high-performance AI bots that can take actions on your behalf, such as: B. Retrieve data from incoming emails and import it into various apps.

You’ve probably heard rumblings from agents. Companies from Nvidia (NVDA) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) to Microsoft (MSFT) and Salesforce (CRM) are increasingly talking about agent AI, a fancy way of referring to AI agents, and claiming that they are the This will change the way both businesses and consumers think about AI technologies.

The goal is to reduce often tedious and time-consuming tasks like filing expense reports – the bane of my professional existence. Not only will we see more AI agents, but also more big tech companies developing them.

Companies that use them say they see changes based on their own internal metrics. According to Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business and industry copilot at Microsoft, the Windows maker has already seen improvements in both its responsiveness to IT issues and sales results.

According to Lamanna, Microsoft employees’ IT self-help success increased by 36%, while revenue per salesperson increased by 9.4%. The company also saw improved turnaround times for HR cases.

As with any new technology, using AI agents takes some getting used to. But if they live up to the high expectations of technology companies, they could convince many users as an impressive new use case for generative AI.

“If … you get very quick and very accurate and very meaningful and helpful answers right away, then that can start to change people’s habits,” Bob O’Donnell, president and principal analyst of TECHnalysis Research, told Yahoo Finance. “But it takes a while to change people’s habits.”

The AI ​​chatbot/AI copilot/AI agent discussion can be a bit confusing. After all, generative AI chatbots still feel like a new technology, and now we’re already being moved on to the next big thing. But these three skills are all part of the same overall system.

Ray Smith, vice president of AI agents at Microsoft, says you can think of an AI co-pilot as your main interface for interacting with your chatbot or assistant. Something like a home screen for your different AI needs.

When you ask your chatbot or assistant to do various tasks for you, it will turn to the AI ​​agents with the appropriate skills.

If that sounds complex, here’s a simple example: Let’s say you want to book a flight. You can tell your chatbot to see what flights are available for you, and it will use various AI agents to check your flight preferences, your calendar and availability, and maybe even your financial apps to make sure you get a flight get a range that fits your budget and then come back with a handful of flight suggestions.

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Earlier this month, Google unveiled its experimental prototype, Project Mariner, capable of navigating the Internet and performing tasks via Google’s Chrome browser. In a video demo, Google shows the example of a user who needs to look up the contact information for a number of companies listed in a Google Sheets document. The user asks Mariner to remember the list of companies, go to their websites, and find their contact emails.

The agent then actively navigates to each website, retrieves the email information, and provides it to each company. Google sped up the process significantly in the demo video, explaining that Mariner is still in its early stages and it takes time to complete requests. However, the company says accuracy and speed will improve quickly, although there is no set release date.

Apple’s (AAPL) Apple Intelligence will also eventually offer AI agent-style capabilities. In upcoming updates, the company says you’ll be able to do things like ask Siri when to pick up your husband or wife from the airport. The assistant will then check your email to see when the flight is expected to land, check traffic via Apple Maps, and give you a suggested departure time.

According to Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, agents will also be able to help employees find potential business opportunities and then help them organize and book meetings with potential clients.

Don’t expect powerful, multi-level AI agents to become mainstream once the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day. We’ll see some next year, but it will probably take a bit of work to iron out all the problems. Instead, expect companies to focus on more fundamental enterprise use cases.

“There will also be more boring agents doing productive things, things that automate IT processes, things that automate other tedious tasks,” O’Donnell said. “I think these are going to be really important next year.”

Email Daniel Howley at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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