The proliferation of AI agents capable of independently performing actions on behalf of users could change the economics of digital communications. Morgan Stanley notes that automation does not necessarily lead to a proportional reduction in interactions between clients and companies. If a personal assistant makes it easier to send a request, make a reservation, receive confirmation, or perform another operation, the overall number of such inquiries may increase. Simultaneously, corporate AI systems reduce the cost of processing requests, creating prerequisites for the growth of operations paid on a per-use basis. Thus, one part of the market reduces labor costs for generating responses, while the other simplifies the process of reaching out to businesses.
According to Morgan Stanley analyst Elizabeth Porter, this model is particularly noticeable in the field of communication platforms and software. In the case of Twilio, additional demand may be generated through messages and calls that the agent initiates to solve specific tasks: from sending confirmation codes to notifications about bookings and follow-up messages. For contact center providers, including NICE, Five9, and RingCentral, the increase in inquiries could partially offset the pressure of automation on the traditional model based on the number of workstations. The web services market is considered separately: agents need not only pages with company information but also tools for searching, booking services, and conducting transactions. In this logic, Morgan Stanley highlights Wix and Shopify as companies whose products can be used in new interaction scenarios.
Porter emphasizes that the impact of AI agents should be considered primarily in the medium term. The mere proliferation of such systems does not imply an immediate change in the financial results of companies, as the effect depends on the pace of implementation, the structure of user demand, and which operations will actually be transferred to AI. The analyst also urges caution in transferring positive expectations from the long-term development of technology to the results of individual quarters. For contact centers, the key factor remains the balance between reducing manual work and increasing the total number of interactions, whereas for communication and trading platforms, the increase in actions performed by agents on behalf of users may be more important.
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