AI’s role in HR: Collaborator, agent, and game-changer

We have witnessed how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has impacted Human Resource (HR) functions in the past 10 years from finding, hiring, and training employees to analysing their performance and retaining them. AI integration into HR has impacted the landscape of talent management in a big way, further boosted by Gen AI, providing a personalised employee experience and improving productivity.
While we were still getting ready to use GenAI to gather and analyse data and predict employee behaviour, the era of AI agents started. These AI agents would work with humans, offering unprecedented capabilities in automation and efficiency across sectors, as predicted by NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang recently at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025.
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According to him, the Information Technology department of every company is soon going to become the HR department of AI agents. These AI agents will maintain, nurture, onboard, and improve a lot of digital agents and provision them to the companies for usage.
On the same lines, OpenAI chief Sam Altman predicted that AI agents could enter the workforce by 2025, and this year will witness a major transformation. “We believe that, by 2025, we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies,” Altman said in a blog post.
Meanwhile, the AI agents’ market, valued at $5.1 Bn in 2024, is projected to soar to $47.1 Bn by 2030. Just as companies today rely on SaaS services, in the future, they will hire specialised AI agents to meet their needs. Employees will widely use autonomous agents to perform tasks like attending meetings, making summaries, drafting emails, and translating meetings live.
Impact of AI on HR in 2025: A prediction
AI would further enhance access to digital services, offering personalised solutions, and fostering skill-based hiring processes. However, there are risks involved, including the potential for perpetuating biases if AI systems are trained on flawed data, and exacerbating the digital divide if access to technology is uneven, according to a study done on the impact of AI on hiring and talent management by the Centre for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy (CFHETS).
The report examined the impact of AI on HR practices, based on interviews of 20 HR leaders and technology developers. From the scenarios described in the interviews, the report was divided into three different kinds of use cases.
AI impact as a collaborator
One of the main advantages of using GenAI would be its ability to generate and refine content. It would assess the information, including synthesising performance reviews, and offering an overview of employee evaluations. HR practitioners would reference their use of GenAI in keeping employee handbooks up to date, ensuring these documents reflect the latest policies and practices. HR leaders would consider Gen AI as a ‘junior level assistant’ as it would be used for the collaborator roles. It would allow HRs to take up more strategic work, the study said.
Besides, fostering higher work productivity and more strategic focus, a few users also expressed enthusiasm for how GenAI could generate neutral language or refine content for any bias it may encode.
Impact of AI as agent
The other interesting usage of AI is like an ‘agent’, which is likely to remain a hot topic for discussion in 2025. According to HRs interviewed for the study on the impact of AI on talent management, AI is mostly used for things like enhancing employee self-service. For instance, a company successfully implemented a chatbot to help onboard new employees. By automating responses to questions sent by employees, the chatbot not only streamlines getting information to employees, but also evaluate surveys. They improve overall engagement with the company’s professional development and wellness programmes.
Impact of AI as revolutionary
The role of AI as collaborator and agent is described as practical and immediate in the study conducted. They are used in such a way and are likely to be used more in that manner. Further, many HR technology developers predicted that the application of AI could drive deeper change that would fundamentally alter how we approach hiring and talent management at present.
As we stand on the brink of a new era, the integration of AI into HR will redefine the workforce landscape. The question is not whether AI will transform HR—but how organisations will adapt to this transformation to create a future-ready, human-centric workplace.