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Microsoft unveils Autonomous AI Agents

PLUS: Musk's xAI launches an API

Together with

Howdy! It’s Barsee again.

Happy Tuesday, AI family, and welcome back to AI Valley.

In today’s edition:

  • 🤖 Microsoft unveils Autonomous AI Agents

  • 🧩 Musk's xAI launches an API

  • 🤖 Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources.

Ready, set, go…

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MICROSOFT

🤖 Microsoft unveils Autonomous AI Agents

On Monday, Microsoft announced it is set to release autonomous AI agents in public preview through Copilot Studio next month.

How can it help businesses?

  • Copilot Studio will let companies create AI agents to automate tasks like sifting through sales leads or handling customer inquiries.

  • These agents use advanced AI models from both Microsoft and OpenAI, including the new OpenAI 'o1' series for complex tasks.

  • Microsoft will also offer 10 pre-made agents for tasks like supply chain management, sales, and customer service through Dynamics 365.

How are companies benefiting from Copilot Studio?

  • According to Microsoft, 60% of Fortune 500 companies are already using Microsoft 365 Copilot, with Lumen Technologies, Honeywell, and Finastra reporting productivity boosts and cost savings.

  • Early results show the Copilot agents reduce lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.

Are there similar tools out there?

Salesforce introduced its own set of autonomous AI agents, called Agentforce, back in September.

QUICK HITS

  1. Harvard’s new AI model, CHIEF, detects cancer with 96% accuracy across 19 types, outperforming existing systems. (link)

  1. AI fundraising activity from last year. Data from Crunchbase highlights ongoing investor appetite and engagement in AI-related companies. (link)

  1. IBM has launched Granite 3.0, a new suite of AI models aimed at making generative AI scalable and safe for enterprise use. It has shown strong performance across multiple academic and business benchmarks. (link)

  2. Based on their revenue streams, AnthropicAI emerges as an infrastructure player, while OpenAI operates more like a consumer-facing company. (link)

  1. Meta is testing facial recognition technology to help users identify misleading 'celebrity bait' ads that use AI-generated images of famous people to lure them into scams. (link)

  1. Midjourney is set to release an upgraded web tool next week that allows users to edit any uploaded images. (link)

  2. Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Elite, calling it “world’s fastest mobile CPU”. (link)

  1. Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, is making significant moves in the AI industry as she seeks to raise over $100 million for her new startup. (link)

  2. ETH Zurich researchers showcase a method using YOLO models to bypass reCAPTCHAv2 with 100% accuracy, raising concerns about the future of image-based CAPTCHAs. (link)

  1. Perplexity to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, which would more than double its current valuation of $3 billion if successful. (link)

TRENDING TOOLS

  • Lambda > New on-demand 1x, 2x, and 4x NVIDIA H100 SXM instances offer AI developers more affordable and flexible access to powerful compute. (link) *

  • Anthropic Console > Meta-prompter and prompt improver. (link)

  • Perplexity Finance > Provides real-time stock quotes, historical earnings reports, industry peer comparisons, and detailed company financial analysis. (link)

  • Talkstack AI > Create 1000 sales and customer support agents in a click. (link)

  • Manicode > Better code generation than Cursor, from your CLI. (link)

COOL FINDINGS / RESOURCES

  • A tutorial on how to build a directory using AI and no-code tools. (link)

  • How to build OpenAI's Swarm Web Extractor which can autonomously search the web, map entire websites, and extract data. (link)

  • Solving complex problems with OpenAI o1 models. (link)

  • 10 custom GPTs that will save you time and supercharge your productivity. (link)

xAI

🧩 Musk's xAI launches an API

On Monday, Elon Musk announced the launch of an API by his AI company xAI, enabling developers to integrate the Grok chatbot into other applications.

What can it do?

  • The xAI API allows developers to connect Grok with external tools like databases and search engines through function calling.

  • While it's not functional yet, the API documentation hints at future support for vision models that could analyze text and images, broadening Grok's possible applications.

How to access it?

To view and use the API, users must sign into their xAI accounts and apply for developer access to the PromptIDE and API in the profile settings by selecting “Request Access.”

How much it costs?

The API currently only has one model, dubbed “grok-beta,” and it costs $5 per million input tokens or $15 per million output tokens.

DAILY DOSE OF CONTENTS

1/ Deepgram unveils its Voice Agent API, enabling natural, real-time human-machine conversations powered by high-performance speech recognition and synthesis models.

2/ First job interview with Applicant AI's video recruiter.

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY

That’s all for today’s issue, folks.

💡 Help me get better and suggest new ideas at [email protected] or @heyBarsee

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