Upwork Updates Summer 2025: AI Innovation that Amplifies Human Brilliance

The future of work isn’t mankind vs. machine — it’s human brilliance amplified by artificial intelligence (AI). As AI transforms how companies and freelancers connect, Upwork continues to deliver smart solutions for our customers that streamline workflows, spark better collaboration, and supercharge productivity.

With Upwork Updates Summer 2025, we’re introducing over 75 new features and product improvements—each thoughtfully designed to solve real pain points shared by the businesses and freelancers who rely on us every day. These updates support what we do best: Combining human expertise and AI innovation to solve problems, achieve results, and deliver meaningful work at scale.

Uma, your “always-on” work agent

Today’s businesses and professionals face growing pressure to move faster and drive business impact with less friction. They also expect emerging AI technologies to power and improve their experiences across our Marketplace – that’s what Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, is built to serve.

Our Spring 2024 Update marked the debut of Uma, an always-on companion, as Upwork embraced generative AI to help clients and freelancers discover each other, get started on projects faster, and complete more high-quality work together. Then in Fall 2024, Uma began taking on a broader role, helping freelancers draft proposals and clients create job posts and evaluate candidates. Today, Uma is already delivering real impact, powering the majority of all new client job posts and helping clients post jobs more than 70% faster. As a result, more clients are connecting with the right freelance talent, with high-value jobs from new clients now filling at an 8% higher rate since Uma launched. Uma turbocharges a more personalized and intuitive experience for freelancers too, helping connect them to higher-value projects and find more opportunities to earn more. 

With our Summer 2025 Update, Uma begins the transition from utility companion to always-on work agent. That means less manual effort, fewer bottlenecks, and faster outcomes for businesses and freelancers, as Uma will begin to take action and drive outcomes on their behalf, moving hiring and collaboration forward. 

Instant interviews lead Uma’s new wave of agentic capabilities. Clients can now equip Uma with their preferred interview questions, then Uma conducts the interviews during the proposal process and delivers structured summaries of each freelancer’s responses while highlighting how they may align with the role and client needs. 

Consider a fast-moving product team racing toward a critical launch date, but missing a key specialist to stay on track. Rather than add sourcing and interviews to their growing list of to-dos, Uma steps in. From drafting job requirements to summarizing proposals—and now even interviewing top candidates—Uma lightens the load by delivering actionable insights to support better and faster hiring decisions, allowing the team to stay focused while Uma works in the background to move hiring forward.

Instant interviews, now available in beta, serve freelancers by reducing friction during the proposal process. Consider a professional eager to learn more about a role and showcase their skills, but they’re in a different time zone or have a conflict when the client is available to meet. Uma’s new capabilities mean no more cover letters or middle-of-the-night interviews. Freelancers can jump straight into live interviews with Uma on their own time and demonstrate their soft skills that matter in winning work but are challenging to articulate via their profile or cover letter. Now Uma-powered instant interviews provide a unique new channel to showcase their communications and problem-solving skills with a twist of creativity.

Uma-powered collaboration and work delivery

Uma is increasingly delivering more valuable, customized insights and responses—drawing from Upwork’s rich, proprietary data—to clients and freelancers across the full project flow. To help clients find and hire the right talent faster, Upwork search has become more personalized and intuitive with context-aware suggestions based on active job posts and search history, as well as seamless continuity from previous searches. Uma-powered search helps clients find the right answers and guidance they need faster, by drawing on a wealth of insights from contextual, work-specific interactions across the Upwork marketplace.

Uma also now powers a reimagined job posting experience, providing clients with a strength rating and actionable tips to improve their job posts and fill them faster. And Uma’s proposal writing capabilities for freelancers and candidate evaluation capabilities for businesses continue to improve and are now generally available for all clients and freelancers.

But that’s not all—we’re also launching Upwork video meetings, integrated right into the Upwork messaging platform, providing AI-generated summaries, transcripts, recordings and action items to clients and freelancers after every virtual meeting. Clients and talent can align in real-time and stay focused on meaningful discussions while Uma automatically captures and organizes project notes, target milestones, and contract terms.  

Upgraded offerings for confident hiring and seamless collaboration

In addition to new AI capabilities, we’re also rolling out enhancements to our premium plans for subscribers—many of which were inspired directly from conversations with customers who rely on Upwork to move faster and work smarter.

Business Plus now includes direct contracts, enabling businesses to seamlessly invite, manage, and securely pay talent they’ve sourced off-platform, bringing more of their extended workforce into one streamlined workflow. We’ve also introduced AI-curated shortlists, currently in beta, of top-matching freelancers and proposal recommendations, helping clients find the right fit faster and with greater confidence.

Freelancer Plus now replaces basic bid visibility with real-time proposal insights, giving freelancers a clearer picture of how their submissions stack up and where they might best focus their efforts. And new customizable job alerts surface curated work opportunities as they go live, helping freelancers apply faster, save time, and find new projects. 

Powering what’s next for the world of work

Our Summer 2025 Update showcases all these innovations (and more) designed to help you work smarter, move faster, and unlock greater impact—whether you’re hiring, landing opportunities, or driving outcomes. By combining AI intelligence with human brilliance, we’re building the premier next-gen marketplace—designed to shape the future of work and help you lead it.

Explore what’s new at upwork.com/updates.

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