he evolution of generative AI (gen AI) has opened the door to great opportunities across organizations, particularly regarding gen AI agents—AI-powered software entities that plan and perform tasks or aid humans by delivering specific services on their behalf. So far, adoption at scale across businesses has faced difficulties because of data quality, employee distrust, and cost of implementation. In addition, capabilities have raced ahead of leaders’ capacity to imagine how these agents could be used to transform work.

However, as gen AI technologies progress and the next-generation agents emerge, we expect more use cases to be unlocked, deployment costs to decrease, long-tail use cases to become economically viable, and more at-scale automation to take place across a wider range of enterprise processes, employee experiences, and customer interfaces. This evolution will demand investing in strong AI trust and risk management practices and policies as well as platforms for managing and monitoring agent-based systems.

In this interview, McKinsey Digital’s Barr Seitz speaks with senior partners Jorge Amar and Lari Hämäläinen and partner Nicolai von Bismarck to explore the evolution of gen AI agents and how companies can and should implement the technology, where the pools of value lie for the enterprise as a whole. They particularly explore what these developments mean for customer service. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.