Microsoft announced in April 2009 that Microsoft Agent support will be discontinued with Windows 7.Those still using computers running Windows 95, 98 or NT might have occasionally stumbled across some errors triggered by the fact that they do not have Microsoft Agent installed on their PC. Also, SAPI 5.3 compatible speech engines are supported with Windows 7. The download contains the character “Merlin”, which also shipped with Windows Vista. While the Microsoft Agent runtime is not pre-installed with Windows 7, it can be downloaded separately from Microsoft. (In previous versions of Windows, Agent uses SAPI version 4, which is not supported in Windows Vista and later.) Beginning with Vista, multilingual features of Microsoft Agent under a particular language version of the OS are not supported that is, Agent will function in other languages only under a localized Windows version of the same language. In Windows Vista, Microsoft Agent uses Speech API (SAPI) version 5.3 as its primary text-to-speech provider. (Due to customer feedback, Microsoft has decided to provide an installation package of the Microsoft Agent core components for use on Windows 7.) We encourage Microsoft Agent application developers and redistributors to evaluate their activities in light of this decision." Microsoft is no longer offering licenses and no longer distributes the SDK. Beginning with Windows 7, Microsoft Agent will not be included or supported in future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Microsoft recently announced that "Microsoft has decided to discontinue development of Microsoft Agent technologies. The current version of Microsoft Agent was quietly released on MSDN in 1997. However, Bob Actors or Office 97 assistants are incompatible with Office 2000 and later versions, and vice versa. Instead the Office team created their own characters including one dubbed "Clippit" or "Clippy".
Microsoft Agent replaced the original Microsoft Bob code in Office 2000, although this use did not include Agent's much-touted speech synthesis or recognition capabilities or any of the four Microsoft Agent characters.
The software release also included four interactive characters as well as a utility that enables developers to assemble their own characters and interactions. Microsoft Agent was subsequently created by Tandy Trower in an attempt to offer technology that was more flexible and available to third-party developers to include in their applications and web pages. Interactive character technology was first introduced in Microsoft Bob, which used an early version of Agent technology internally referred to as "Microsoft Actor." It was the code used in initial version of the Office Assistant in Office 97. The theory behind this software came from work on social interfaces by Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information. Microsoft Agent functionality was exposed as an ActiveX control that can be used by web pages. It was completely discontinued in Windows 8.
It was not included with Windows 7 but can be downloaded from Microsoft. It came preinstalled as part of Windows 98 through Windows Vista. Thus it was an example of an embodied agent. Microsoft Agent was a technology developed by Microsoft which employed animated characters, text-to-speech engines, and speech recognition software to enhance interaction with computer users.