It is no longer the case that AI agents are the domain of entrepreneurs straight from Silicon Valley – for example, Mark Zuckerberg, who is supposed to create the “CEO of AI”. Well-known brands from Poland have recently been investing in “agency” solutions – such as Allegro, InPost, Orange and eSky. We talked to managers of large companies from Poland and checked what “Polish agents look like in practice”.
But what are agents anyway? As is the case in the IT world, each big player has its own definition. Google Cloud, for example, says that its new solutions provide “a unified technology stack that allows companies to move from using simple chatbots towards autonomous agents.” Complicated? The company's representatives say that its new version of the Gemini Enterprise Agent platform allows you to actually manage agents who, for example, examine the market for living room sofas for a furniture company, then search for appropriate niches, make presentations – and finally develop detailed marketing and sales campaigns. In other words, AI agents will be able to perform tasks that previously required dozens – if not hundreds – of employees.
What does it look like in practice in Polish companies? The well-known travel platform eSky, for example, recently introduced two large “agency” solutions. One of them is MAIA – ““intelligent travel assistant”. The second one is an internal agent who is supposed to help in the functioning of the company.
— The decision to implement the MAIA agent was based on the belief that there are as many journeys as there are people. Even if the directions are similar, there are always completely different motivations, different styles, methods of organization… Reservation systems, at least the traditional ones, simply do not always keep up. This is what we wanted to address, and the initiative came from the bottom up. The technology itself was created based on Google tools. The idea was to use a model in which reservations could be made in the most natural language possible – by talking to an assistant. At the beginning, we focused primarily on the inspirational element. We are currently integrating further tools available in eSky with MAIA so that users have access to them in one place – says Piotr Woś, COO at eSky, in an interview with Business Insider Polska.
— Our customers can ask about the current flight status, request to change the departure date or buy additional luggage. The next step will be to expand it to include voice interaction, also with graphic elements. This is important because travel is not bought only through text, he adds.
How are the effects? — I can say that over the last few weeks we have had 44,000. talks in Poland with a MAIA agent. The quality of these calls is very high, we have a lot of reservations. Although our main goal is not yet to generate very large sales through MAIA, but rather to inspire travelers and build engagement. MAIA is not currently available on our website, only in the application – adds Piotr Woś.
How is this different from regular chatbots? — An ordinary user can ask Gemini about a good restaurant and will get an answer based on public data. Agents for companies are designed to build communication between the client and the company based on the company's private data – in this case eSky – says Dawid Papież, Industry Leader from Google Polska.
A key player in Polish e-commerce, Allegro, is also focusing on “agency” solutions. The company has already made an AI assistant available to customers in its application, which was created in cooperation with OpenAI. The company implemented a similar solution for sellers on the platform.
— We support sellers in automating tedious analytical, operational and diagnostic tasks. Such operational relief is intended to directly lead to the growth of partners on the platform and to increase their satisfaction – we hear from Allegro representatives. The assistant for sellers “will be developed into a proactive advisor, integrated with the seller's daily work and capable of relieving the operational burden of daily activities on the platform,” as Allegro managers also tell us.
Agents operate in silence
Our conversations show that AI agents are a bit like intelligence agents – the ones who are most important are often those who are the most silent. AI assistants at Allegro or “Von Halsky” InPost may make an impression and improve the comfort of shopping, but the real revolution is “internal” agents who completely change how companies operate.
Dawid Papież, Industry Leader from Google Poland, admits that preparing for important conversations today can take “15 seconds” – if you use an internal Google agent that is connected to Gmail, Docsy or notes.
Our interlocutors sometimes talk about the “great change” that awaits companies – and others even talk about the “Copernican revolution”.
— I think we are slowly getting used to the fact that we have the ability to “talk” to data using natural language. This is truly a great transformation. Please note that we don't even enter “Pizza Warszawa-Mokotów” in Google anymore. Rather, “which pizza is the best in Warsaw, Mokotów?”. A similar transformation is happening in companies. Their employees began to “talk” to data, data reaches organization members in a completely new way. And this is important especially in companies that rely on gigantic amounts of data, such as eSky. That's the beauty of this transformation – we can interact with data. We used to say that we had too much data and we were not using their full potential. Now we can analyze huge amounts of data in seconds. In my opinion, this is the beginning of a great change, says Dawid Pope.
How large is the scale of “agent” implementations in Polish companies? It's hard to quantify the scale yet. — I work with large entities, the largest in the region. At least 60 percent of them are companies that have either started to learn it – or have already started implementing it. I just wanted to emphasize that we are talking here largely about large companies, including Polish ones – Dawid Pope tells us.
Marcin Kuśmierz, president of Allegro, says that we are still only seeing the “beginning of changes” that AI can bring. “We look at artificial intelligence not as a single function or tool, but as a technology that changes the way e-commerce functions,” he adds.
Of course, an obvious question arises: what will happen to “white collar” employees, corporate employees whose tasks are increasingly taken over by agents. — I'm an optimist here. In my opinion, they will no longer burn their energy on repetitive processes. Instead, they will be able to draw conclusions from the data – and thus build added value – says Dawid Pope from Google. Piotr Woś from eSky says he agrees with this “100 percent”. But he adds that not everyone will go through this revolution without problems. — The organization also needs to have the right mindset, he says.
“The transformation towards an agent-based enterprise is the future of every organization,” argues Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. Although Polish managers usually agree with this, they also admit that it will still take a lot of time. — For now, it is too early to expect that such tools will generate any very large sales. Although some users already end the conversation with a transaction. But it is worth emphasizing that at some stage the customer is redirected to our traditional website. So such a “fully agentic” mode is still a thing of the future, says Piotr Woś from eSky.
See also: So many Poles want autonomous cars and caretaker robots
Author: Mateusz Madejski, journalist of Business Insider Polska
