Marc Benioff says AI and humans are now indistinguishable in customer service

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says AI and human customer service agents are indistinguishable.
• Benioff said AI agents had reached “another level of capability.”
• Customer service is seen as one of the sectors where AI could have the biggest impact.

Marc Benioff thinks AI has progressed to a point where humans and AI customer service agents are now indistinguishable.

In an interview with David Sacks at the All-In Summit, the Salesforce CEO was asked if AI had reached a level where people speaking to customer support could tell if it was a human or an AI agent.

“We are already at the point. We already have that live,” Benioff said. “We’re really getting to, like, another level of capability, and I think that’s it’s pretty impressive.”

Benioff said the company planned to scale the feature to thousands of customers before the end of the year.

Customer service has long been seen as one of the sectors where AI could have the biggest impact. Many companies have been incorporating the tech into customer service departments to see if it can improve customer experience.

Earlier this year, Swedish fintech company Klarna claimed its AI assistant was doing “the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.” The company said the chatbot was more accurate in “errand resolution” and on par with human agents when it came to customer satisfaction.

Some companies have claimed that AI agents deliver better customer satisfaction than human workers.

Last year, the CEO of Octopus Energy, a UK-based household energy supplier, said emails written by AI delivered 80% customer satisfaction, improving on the 65% achieved by skilled, trained people.

However, introducing AI in other customer service areas has not been as successful. In June, McDonald’s said it was removing its Automated Order Taker technology from over 100 restaurants after videos showing flaws with the tech went viral the previous year.

Representatives for Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.