Microsoft Corp. plans Monday to unveil its first product in a new line of software aimed at taking on International Business Machines Corp. and others in the growing market to apply artificial intelligence to everyday business needs.

The new product, a customer-service virtual assistant, is designed to let people describe problems in their own words and respond with suggestions drawn from user manuals, help documents and similar materials. Users can request a human agent, in which case the bot will try to assist the customer-care...