Microsoft is launching a significant expansion of its Copilot AI assistant on Tuesday, introducing tools that let employees build applications, automate workflows, and create specialized AI agents using only conversational prompts — no coding required.The new capabilities, called App Builder and Workflows, mark Microsoft’s most aggressive attempt yet to merge artificial intelligence with software development, enabling the estimated 100 million Microsoft 365 users to create business tools as easily as they currently draft emails or build spreadsheets.”We really believe that a main part of an AI-forward employee, not just developers, will be to create agents, workflows and apps,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s president of business and industry Copilot, said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Part of the job will be to build and create these things.”The announcement comes as Microsoft deepens its commitment to AI-powered productivity tools while navigating a complex partnership with OpenAI, the creator of the underlying technology that powers Copilot. On the same day, OpenAI completed its restructuring into a for-profit entity, with Microsoft receiving a 27% ownership stake valued at approximately $135 billion.How natural language prompts now create fully functional business applicationsThe new features transform Copilot from a conversational assistant into what Microsoft envisions as a comprehensive development environment accessible to non-technical workers. Users can now describe an application they need — such as a project tracker with dashboards and task assignments — and Copilot will generate a working app complete with a database backend, user interface, and security controls.”If you’re right inside of Copilot, you can now have a conversation to build an application complete with a backing database and a security model,” Lamanna explained. “You can make edit requests and update requests and change requests so you can tune the app to get exactly the experience you want before you share it with other users.”The App Builder stores data in Microsoft Lists, the company’s lightweight database system, and allows users to share finished applications via a simple link—similar to sharing a document. The Workflows agent, meanwhile, automates routine tasks across Microsoft’s ecosystem of products, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Planner, by converting natural language descriptions into automated processes.A third component, a simplified version of Microsoft’s Copilot Studio agent-building platform, lets users c …
