Salesforce celebrated its new wave of artificially intelligent ‘agents’ on Wednesday, with CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff envisioning a new era of business productivity — while branding competing efforts from Microsoft as “the next Clippy”. The American CRM giant shared its AI ‘agents’ at the San Francisco Dreamforce event, where Benioff declared the new Agentforce platform one of the most significant developments in Salesforce’s history. Benioff said its new AI agents can automate and augment customer support processes, leveraging the data and functions already used by Salesforce clients.
In one demonstration, an AI agent built for luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue held an audio voice call with a customer, identified their order, negotiated an exchange, and organised a store pick-up. “It knows your business. It can plan, it can reason, and take action on your behalf,” Benioff said during the keynote.
Source: Supplied Businesses can build bespoke agents, and use more than 100 out-of-the-box prompts to help configure those agents to their specific requirements. Salesforce says conversations performed by agents will cost US$2 to begin with, with much of the functionality available to existing users through a freemium model. Microsoft, Salesforce chart different courses on AI The Agentforce platform emerges in an increasingly crowded market for AI-powered business tools, including offerings like Microsoft’s Copilot system.
In its own press materials, Micro.