Low-code technology is radically changing the traditional development landscape. And with Microsoft Power Platform and next-generation AI, Microsoft is providing both a new way for developers to solve business problems and a new way for end users to use AI in the flow of their work to be more productive.

We recognize the significance of both AI and low-code for organizations, and the benefits these technologies in union can have for all developers: a more intuitive, iterative experience for citizen developers and accelerated development for professional developers.

Today, we’re taking another big step forward in this journey with the launch of next-generation AI features for Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder, enabled by Azure OpenAI Service.

Next-generation AI features for Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder
New! Conversation booster in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents: Simply point your bot to your company-specific resources, like your website or an internal knowledge base, and watch it start to answer questions in minutes, right out-of-box, with no additional authoring. Learn more here.

New! Create text with GPT model in AI Builder: AI Builder now brings Azure OpenAI Service to its user-friendly interface, enabling makers to use a new low-code generative AI model and templates with Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps. Learn more here.

We announced AI Builder four years ago as the first AI capability in Microsoft Power Platform, followed by Power Apps Ideas 18 months ago, which was the first infusion of generative AI in a commercially available product. And we have continued to invest with the addition of express design in Power Apps and description to flow in Power Automate late last year. And we have much more to come.

The image shows a timeline for accelerating AI innovation with next-generation. It follows the following order, from left to right: 2021 Power Apps and Power BI, 2022 Power Automate and Power Apps, 3/6/2023 Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder, 2023 Coming Soon.

Conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents is the low-code approach to building chatbots with an intuitive visual drag-and-drop approach that vastly simplifies bot creation, all backed with a code experience, if needed (preview). And like most industry bot tools, it has relied on the maker to create conversation topics and configure dialog flows.

But that’s about to change with the new conversation booster capability in Power Virtual Agents.

Normally, when a bot encounters a question or response that it hasn’t been trained on, it can only respond in one of two ways: ask the user to rephrase, or offer to connect to a human agent, something we are all very likely familiar with.

Now, using the power of next-generation AI, you can connect your bot to your most current and useful data sources, like internal and external company websites, and the bot can immediately start to use that data to construct a response.

This means that out of the box, the bot is ready to answer user questions based on the information on your site—all without authoring a single topic or spending additional development cycles. This gives developers more time to focus on building complex conversation flows and delivering increased resolution rates and improved customer outcomes.

With the conversation booster feature, you can use the data source that holds your single source of truth across many channels through the chat experience, and the bot responses are filtered and moderated to adhere to Microsoft’s responsible AI principles.

This also unlocks new use cases for bots which may have been difficult to justify due to the expected build time and cost. With the bot now able to search, summarize, and moderate answers at speed, with just a URL and no additional development, you can quickly create bots to help resolve repetitive queries for your customers and internal functions like human resources, IT, operations, and more.