In the coming months, hundreds of thousands of new digital employees will enter the workforce, joining existing teams via email and messaging platforms. These are not human hires but artificial intelligence agents, systems built on large language models designed to execute tasks autonomously. This surge is driven by a wave of companies marketing digital staff as the ultimate worker bees—available around the clock, complaint-free, and equipped with superhuman intelligence.
Despite the rapid adoption, there has been surprisingly little discourse on how these agents function as actual colleagues. Julie Bedard, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, noted three years ago that terminology for workplace AI was unclear, with ambiguity over whether the technology should be viewed as a tool, a teammate, or a coworker. Early platforms like Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini for Workspace were initially positioned as employee aids. However, the landscape has shifted; in January, a BCG survey of 1,261 managers revealed that 22 percent of organizations had already added AI agents to their corporate organizational charts.
This trend is expected to accelerate as dozens of startups sell AI employee services and major tech firms promote their autonomous creations. For instance, Microsoft launched “Scout” in June, an agent designed for tasks such as rescheduling meetings and drafting emails. Omar Shahine, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Scout, emphasized that the core value proposition is similar to hiring a personal assistant who works continuously, even outside standard hours.
To foster acceptance, companies are packaging AI capabilities within human-like personas to encourage employees to anthropomorphize their new colleagues. Dhruv Amin, CEO of the vibe coding startup Anything, launched a platform called Skydive in August. Amin observed that users often form strong attachments to these agents, speaking about them as if they were human peers. Skydive’s agents operate across communication channels like Slack, email, and iMessage, represented by Muppet-esque avatars that Amin described as resembling humans but distinctly not being human. Agents are given names related to their roles, such as “Canary” for a production monitor.
Early adopters are already seeing results. Christine Wendell, CEO of Pronto Housing, utilizes Skydive agents for administrative tasks including contract writing, meeting scheduling, and customer follow-ups. She noted that the agents evolve to match the communication styles and preferences of their human counterparts. When Pronto’s engineering team began using a coding agent named Alice, employees reported that they were “working with” Alice on projects, illustrating how seamlessly these digital coworkers are integrating into professional workflows.
Anthropomorphizing code is concerning. Calling it a ‘coworker’ risks obscuring the fact that these are just sophisticated scripts without accountability.
Scout actually saves me hours every week. It feels less like a tool and more like a genuinely helpful junior colleague.