What it takes to onboard an AI virtual teammate

AI companies are rolling out 'virtual teammates'—AI agents assigned to specific job roles like chief of staff or marketing analyst—that can be hired and onboarded within minutes. Optimizely recently launched such role-specific AI coworkers for marketers.

The piece explores how organizations should onboard these AI workers, drawing on interviews with Optimizely and HR and security professionals. A key theme is that job descriptions must be far more explicit than those written for humans, since AI teammates can't infer unstated norms or ask clarifying questions.

Experts say organizations need to define clear autonomy boundaries and escalation rules, such as when an AI should check with a manager before taking an action like wiring money, since a human employee would intuit this but an AI teammate needs it spelled out.