Empowering Talent on Upwork To Be the World’s Most AI-Enabled Independent Professionals

Dave Bottoms
Dave Bottoms
November 6, 2023
November 6, 2023
Empowering Talent on Upwork To Be the World’s Most AI-Enabled Independent Professionals
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Generative AI continues to dominate public discourse and is reshaping the work landscape. At Upwork, we’re seeing firsthand the transformative impact generative AI is having on professionals and companies alike, supercharging productivity and efficiency for talent and businesses that need to get mission-critical work done.

New technology amplified by human ingenuity is capable of more than either can do alone; this is the premise behind our recently launched AI Services hub and the core insight underpinning our ongoing “Work, Smarter” campaign. As the world’s work marketplace, we’re in a unique position to empower talent with differentiated access to tools, resources, and insights to help them succeed in this new AI-powered era of work.

To help skilled professionals on Upwork become the most AI-enabled talent in the world, we’re introducing a central destination within the AI Services hub built just for skilled independent professionals. Here talent can find AI-oriented apps, offers for discounts on the best tools, and educational content, in addition to AI-related projects. We’re also launching early access to Upwork Chat Pro, a new GPT-4-powered app, currently live as a beta, developed by Upwork to give independent professionals the opportunity to start and complete work faster and more effectively.

AI Talent Hub

Elevating skilled talent with AI tools, trainings and resources

We believe that empowering skilled talent with access to the best AI tools, apps, and resources will lead to greater productivity, higher freelancer earnings, and, ultimately, better outcomes for clients. We know independent talent on Upwork are interested in leveraging generative AI in their workflows.

Our latest research from the Upwork Research Institute shows that over three-quarters (76%) of freelancers have high confidence in their ability to learn new AI tools. Independent professionals believe generative AI can help them be more efficient and productive. But, given the flood of tools reaching the market, there is uncertainty about the best tools to meet a specific need, or how to incorporate a new tool into common workflows.

Earlier this year Upwork began offering direct access to generative AI apps for the professionals on our marketplace. We started with generative AI services from Jasper for copywriting, marketing, and image creation. Through partnership with Jasper, all talent on Upwork had access to this tool, enabling them to unlock opportunities to increase their productivity, communicate more effectively with clients, and elevate the quality of their work.

Today, we’re building on our commitment to empower talent on Upwork to be the world’s most AI-enabled independent professionals. By partnering with leading providers like Adobe, Amazon, Miro, and ClickUp, we’re able to curate and present the most advanced AI tools, without leaving the Upwork platform. Independent talent on Upwork now have access to:

  • Adobe Tools for Creativity. This includes discounts to Creative Cloud All Apps and Photoshop subscriptions, which include innovations like Generative Fill powered by Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models. In addition, discounts are available for Lightroom subscriptions.
  • Amazon for Software Development. Talent on Upwork can now access Amazon’s AI-based coding companion CodeWhisperer.
  • Miro for Virtual Collaboration. This includes a free trial for Miro’s Business Plan that includes access to Miro Assist, an AI partner that uses your board content to help you build the next big thing with a prompt, a chat, or a click.
  • ClickUp for Productivity. Talent on Upwork can access a discount for ClickUp Unlimited and Business plans plus access to ClickUp AI, a creativity and productivity tool designed for roles like marketing, engineering, and project management.
Apps and offers

In addition to these new tools, we’ve introduced an AI Education Library via Upwork Academy. This will enable talent to easily access AI skills and powerful capabilities they can use to mobilize these apps and unlock new projects on Upwork. This AI education module includes:

  • The Education Marketplace. The Education Marketplace provides AI skills-based courses from trusted providers including Coursera, Jasper, and Udemy.
  • A Generative AI learning path. This learning path consists of a self-paced set of courses that covers the basics of generative AI and guides talent on ways they can use generative AI to elevate their work.
  • Mini courses. Mini courses have been developed by Top-Rated freelancers on Upwork and consist of short, digestible content on specialized AI topics like building an AI chatbot.
AI Education Library

Embedding more generative AI into the Upwork experience

AI isn’t new to Upwork. But advances in machine learning and data science techniques have led to tuning large language models (LLMs) that enable a more robust Upwork experience that is even more powerful than ever for customers on our marketplace.

In July, we announced new beta features powered by OpenAI that include an AI-powered job post generator, an Upwork chat experience, and automated proposal tips for talent. Today, we’re building on these features with the beta premiere of Upwork Chat Pro, a generative AI app deeply integrated into our platform and powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced LLM.

The new app leverages unique insights from Upwork about independent professionals to provide specific, contextualized responses and recommendations relevant to the needs of professionals on Upwork. The ultimate goal for the app is to help independent professionals start, create, and complete projects more efficiently and effectively.

We will begin making the app available to independent professionals on Upwork over the coming months, and those interested in the experience can sign up on the waitlist (must be logged in to access). Upwork Chat Pro takes us another step forward in delivering on our promise to help people find economic opportunities and get work done better, faster, and more efficiently on Upwork.

Upwork Chat Pro

Getting more work done, smarter

The magic of our marketplace starts with our ability to match the best talent with the right business needs. It extends to our unique position as a two-sided marketplace that can introduce our talent pool to differentiated access to a comprehensive array of AI-based tools and resources. This allows them to be best equipped to provide maximum value to clients and quickly adapt to ever-changing market demands.

As we look ahead to 2024, we will continue exploring the best ways to help our customers take advantage of the opportunities generative AI presents. We plan to build on today’s updates and continue to provide support to independent professionals on Upwork.

What does that look like? It means more apps so talent have the best tools to increase their productivity. It means more offers so talent receive unique access to work solutions. And it means a lot more features and functionality from our team so talent have an ideal experience and are set up to do their best work. The field of generative AI isn’t slowing down, and our innovation isn’t going to slow down, either. Our plan to innovate, iterate, optimize and create value for our customers will only accelerate in the months and years to come.

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Dave Bottoms

Dave Bottoms leads Upwork's Marketplace business unit, a global team responsible for the Talent Marketplace, Search & Recommendations, Ads & Monetization, native Mobile experiences, new product innovation, including Product, Engineering and Design. Dave brings more than 20 years of experience in Silicon Valley to Upwork. He joined the company in 2022 from Meta, where he led the Ads Manager Platform and Experiences team responsible for the flagship enterprise product used by millions of small businesses and global advertisers to drive valuable outcomes across Facebook and Instagram. Prior to Meta, Dave led the Growth team at Dropbox; prior to that he led multiple teams at Yahoo, including global Homepages, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, International expansion. Dave holds a BA in English literature from Denison University.

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