Salesforce (CRM) unveiled its new suite of autonomous artificial intelligence agents ahead of its annual Dreamforce conference on Thursday, saying its Agentforce platform represents “the third wave of the AI revolution.”
Speaking to reporters, CEO Marc Benioff said the deployment of digital agents marks the beginning of a hybrid future in which humans and AI agents will work side by side.
“This is the biggest, most exciting technology project we’ve ever worked on,” Benioff said. “We’re just getting started.”
Agentforce enables Salesforce business customers to build and deploy AI-powered agents tailored to their business needs. It leverages all the data stored in the company’s Data Cloud platform, which combines information from multiple sources.
Autonomous assistants replace human customer service representatives, making decisions and acting on information. Unlike traditional chatbots that handle pre-programmed questions, AI agents can reason and tackle multiple tasks at once. The software runs on Salesforce’s existing business applications.
Salesforce claims that integrating and deploying the technology requires little to no coding, reducing the time and cost of creating agents.
“It’s the difference between asking a Level 1 AI to write a sales email and asking the agent to help you hit your goal, your quota for the year, and then the agent figures out, OK, what are the steps to hit the quota?” said Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI. “The human supervisor looks at the output, and then the agent actually takes those actions. It’s a whole new level of automation.”
Agentforce builds on the company’s existing suite of AI products, including Einstein Copilot, and marks a strategic shift for a company known for its customer relationship management software.
Salesforce touts AI’s effectiveness, but concerns remain
Salesforce seeks to convincing a skeptical market that its AI offerings can compete in an increasingly competitive enterprise AI space led by Microsoft (MSFT).
“I think they need to show us real innovation around AI, that they’re really investing aggressively to be first in AI,” said Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. said in an interview with Yahoo Finance ahead of Thursday’s announcement.
Salesforce shares rose slightly on Thursday and in early trading on Friday, but are still down 3% year to date, compared with an 18% gain for the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIQUE) hint.
Benioff has argued that Salesforce has a significant advantage because of the scale of customer data the company has, highlighting a trove of 250 petabytes during a quarterly earnings call earlier this year. He touted Agentforce as the biggest revenue driver going forward, citing the platform 39 times during Salesforce’s second-quarter earnings call.
Shih said Salesforce’s use of specific customer data also means its AI technology is less prone to hallucinations.
“Having context around what the AI is trying to do makes it more accurate,” Shih told Yahoo Finance. “And then you add all the information, all the data we have about the people who are using it and who they are talking to — it gets to a level of personalization that allows us to start deploying these autonomous agents.”
A handful of companies, including ADP (ADP), OpenTable and Wiley have already deployed these agents. Health care provider Kaiser Permanente uses Agentforce to manage patient requests and has reported resolution rates of over 90%, according to Benioff. Disney (SAY) has deployed agents to reinforce tourist guides in its parks.
“(Disney) said it gave them twice the accuracy of the AI they were already using,” Benioff said.
Agents are equipped to take on different roles right out of the box.
For example, a Salesforce service development agent communicates with new buyers, while a sales coach agent helps human customer representatives refine their sales pitches and coaches them during real-world calls. Some agents also help develop marketing campaigns.
Data security and ethics around AI remain a major concern, as there are few regulations and standards. Shih said Agentforce draws on company-specific data and allows companies to set their own safeguards, based on the tasks assigned to agents.
Any new role or function requires human approval, she said.
“We have these safeguards in place that have been battle-tested through years of production, used by your customer service people, by your salespeople, by your marketers,” she added.
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