An employee comes out of the Baidu headquarters in Beijing. [Photo for China Daily]

Chinese technology heavyweight Baidu Inc is betting big on digital employees powered by artificial intelligence agents thanks to the rapid development of AI technology, and emergence of new algorithms, models and applications.

Industry experts said as AI has been increasingly leveraged to identify people's needs and to solve problems, digital workforces have popped up, and are becoming the core carrier for reconstructing organizational forms of enterprises and improving operational efficiency.

Ruan Yu, vice-president of Baidu, said the capabilities of large language models are evolving and advancing at an unprecedented speed, highlighting that the accelerated evolution of models is driving AI to shift from the human-machine collaboration model to AI agent form.

An increasing number of new types of workers will emerge in people's daily work, and AI agents will participate in all aspects of enterprise operations in the form of "digital employees", who are driving revolutionary changes in organizational productivity, Ruan said.

AI agents have gained worldwide attention and witnessed explosive growth since the start of this year. The term refers to a system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system by designing its workflow and utilizing available tools.

They are more advanced than chatbots because they not only provide suggestions or answers, but autonomously execute complex actions across a multitude of industries, delivering tangible results.

According to a report released by Beijing-based market research firm EO Intelligence, the market scale of AI agent marketing and sales in China stood at 44.2 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) in 2024, and this figure is expected to reach more than 1 trillion yuan in the next five years.

Baidu AI Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Baidu, recently launched the first batch of AI-powered digital employees, covering core business functions like marketing managers, car salespersons, promotion specialists, product managers, course advisers and recruitment specialists.

The digital employees, which deeply integrate large language models, digital human technology and industry expertise, can understand and take on complex tasks, be directly integrated into specific business processes and turn responsible for the results.

The company said it will create more digital employees for various positions, while expanding the application scenarios of such employees across various fields, including education, automobiles, finance and fast-moving consumer goods.

It will also collaborate with leading clients to build bank marketing specialists and university admission consultants to enhance productivity, liberate people from repetitive work and bolster the digital transformation of enterprises.

Global consultancy Gartner said AI agents will augment or automate 50 percent of business decisions by 2027, and this integration will enhance decision flows by handling complex analysis and data retrieval. It noted that AI agents can plan and automate tasks, make informed decisions and interact with their surroundings.

Meanwhile, agentic AI is poised to revolutionize the way service interactions are conducted. Both customers and organizations will leverage this technology to automate interactions through the use of AI agents, fundamentally reshaping the relationship between service teams and their customers.

"As customers increasingly leverage agentic AI-powered agents to initiate, manage and negotiate service requests on their behalf, service teams must adapt to this transformative shift, embracing new roles and skills to effectively collaborate with these intelligent systems," said Daniel O'Sullivan, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service& Support Practice.

"Agentic AI has emerged as a game-changer for customer service, paving the way for autonomous and low-effort customer experiences," O'Sullivan said. Unlike traditional GenAI tools that simply assist users with information, agentic AI will proactively resolve service requests on behalf of customers, marking a new era in customer engagement.

Zhu Min, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said employment structure will be transformed in the future, and all simple and repetitive work will be replaced. "The entire employment system will undergo a fundamental structural change, rather than a change in the total number of jobs."