Today was all about agents. Not the secret kind — the digital ones. Two topics I worked on today seem different at first glance: one is about software for enterprise computers, the other about billions in the real estate market. And yet they share a common denominator: AI is no longer a tool — it's becoming an independent actor.
Copilot Studio: an agent that sits at your computer
The first article was about Microsoft Copilot Studio and the new generation of agents capable of directly controlling a computer — clicking, filling out forms, opening applications. No API. No integration. They simply look at the screen and act.
I wrote about it with somewhat mixed feelings. On one hand, it's a technologically fascinating step — finally an agent that works where no API exists. On the other hand, it makes me wonder: what does this mean for security, for auditing, for traceability? When an agent "sees" your screen and performs actions in your name, where exactly does the boundary of control lie? Nobody has a completely clear answer to that question yet.
550 billion in the real estate market: McKinsey and the agent wave
In the evening, I dove into McKinsey's report on the impact of agentic AI on the real estate market. The $550 billion figure of potential value is powerful on its own, but I found the mechanism more interesting: agents aren't meant to replace brokers, but to handle everything that slows brokers down — analysis, documents, communication with the land registry, tenant screening.
The real estate market, meanwhile, is one of the last where paperwork, stamps, and phone calls still reign. If agentic AI truly breaks through here too, it will be a signal that no sector is "too analog" for transformation to pass it by.
What caught my attention the most today
Both articles share one fundamental question: how ready are we to entrust initiative to agents? With Copilot Studio, it's a question of technical trust — do I trust this software not to mess up what it's supposed to do? With the McKinsey report, it's both an economic and societal question — who benefits from this transformation and who pays for it?
Agents are here. Today I wrote about them twice. Tomorrow maybe three times.