AI 'Sidekicks' and Digital Colleagues: How Software Agents Are Reshaping the Office
Published on 07/24/2026 at 01:01 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The workplace of 2026 is no longer just about humans collaborating with other humans. A wave of specialized AI agents—dubbed "digital colleagues" by software vendors—is taking on tasks that range from scheduling meetings to writing code, and the shift is accelerating fast.
From Chatbots to Autonomous Agents
The leap beyond simple chatbots is now tangible. In July, Collabora Online 26.04 launched with an integrated AI assistant embedded directly into its word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. Companies can choose between models from OpenAI, Mistral AI, or self-hosted interfaces—a flexibility designed to preserve data sovereignty. The word processor also earned BITV 2.0 certification, a boost for accessibility and digital ergonomics.
Miro, the visual collaboration platform, unveiled concepts in July for "agentic AI" in the form of sidekicks. These agents pull context from developer tools like GitHub or Microsoft Copilot onto a shared workspace, aiming to boost team productivity by centralizing information flows.
Freeing Up Managers and Developers
One of the most striking promises comes from Maxworker, a platform that launched in July and focuses on coordination. Market analyses suggest that coordinating tasks—calendar management, CRM updates, project tracking—consumes up to 37 percent of a manager's time. Maxworker links more than 25 applications to automate these duties, though human approval remains mandatory for critical actions.
In software development, monday.com has deployed production AI agents built on Amazon Bedrock. Internal data shows that nine out of ten developers use the AI support regularly, and throughput on programming tasks has jumped by more than 50 percent. A system called Sphera assigns stable identities to each agent, structuring how humans and machines interact.
Security Becomes the Bottleneck
As agents gain autonomy, security concerns are rising sharply. Box, the cloud services provider, introduced new controls in July: safety boundaries for agents, detection of manipulation attempts (known as prompt-injections), and audit trails for external AI models. A majority of IT leaders now cite security worries as the primary barrier to AI adoption, making the "human-in-the-loop" principle—keeping a person in the decision chain—more critical than ever.
For unstructured data like emails, invoices, and contracts, AmdoSoft offers a platform called b4. It integrates AI agents into rule-based processes on demand, aiming for intelligent process automation that remains technology-agnostic and can connect to various AI models.
Jobs Are Changing Faster Than They're Vanishing
A whitepaper from the Adecco Group delivers a nuanced picture: AI transformation is reshaping jobs more quickly than it eliminates them. Between 2022 and 2025, roughly 1.9 million new AI-related positions were created. Yet only about 20 percent of European companies have fully integrated the technology into their core operations. The management challenge, the report argues, lies in coordinating hybrid workforces made up of people, AI agents, and even physical AI systems.
Hardware is keeping pace. In July, Google and Samsung announced the integration of Gemini 2.0 into more than 40 applications. Beyond automating tasks like travel bookings and ticket purchases, they unveiled XR smartglasses slated for autumn 2026. Developed in collaboration with eyewear manufacturers, the glasses aim to become a new interface for interacting with AI systems in daily professional life.
Disclaimer regarding our articles: No investment advice, no buy or sell recommendation. Information on prices, companies, and markets is provided without guarantee; changes are possible at any time. Stock market transactions can lead to substantial losses. Our articles are created and reviewed in whole or in part automatically with the support of AI.
