Microsoft is working on an enterprise-level Copilot feature that would allow companies to build their own custom AI virtual employees. In practice, this would mean that companies would be able to create their own AI chatbots to interact with customers or in-house employees to handle internal tasks, ensuring the tone and behavior of the agent was in line with company guidelines and preferences. This project, titled Microsoft Copilot Studio, is the next stage of AI at work, with a closed beta running earlier this year and a public testing phase planned for November, as reported by TechSpot. The types of tasks that AI employees, dubbed agents by Microsoft, can carry out are generally administrative ones, such as answering customer enquiries via chatbot generating or resolving IT support tickets, and answering emails using prepared templates. The fact that Microsoft refers to agents and ‘virtual employees’ plays on people’s existing fears around AI: namely, that AI could steal human jobs.