Upwork has been fueled by cutting-edge technologies since its inception more than 20 years ago. Our business was founded on the idea that technology could break down barriers and borders, bringing people together to unleash their uniquely human potential to work together in ways made possible by technological advances of the last few decades: ubiquitous personal computers and mobile devices, the internet and, of course, our platform.
At Upwork, we see transformative possibilities already unfolding for the talent and businesses tapping into generative AI, and are thrilled to be ushering a new era of AI onto the world’s work marketplace. We believe generative AI will be a game-changer for work, deliver major wins for professionals and companies alike, and be an avenue for the world to work smarter. Harnessing its power is the next step on our journey to continuously serve all our customers with the talent and technology that they need to get critical work done.
Today, we’re unveiling the first set of generative AI innovations in our ecosystem—available on our new AI Services hub—and progressing in making Upwork the preeminent destination for AI-related talent and work. We are delivering on this vision by serving clients with a singular destination for sourcing the AI talent they need, premiering new AI-powered features for discovering and matching with expert talent across every category of work, and ensuring talent on Upwork have access to the most modern generative AI tools to supercharge their productivity and quality of work. Collectively, these steps move our customers closer to unlocking the magic of Upwork faster and more effectively than ever before.
We’ve been serving customers with broader AI talent needs for years, and as the generative AI era has sprung into existence, we have seen demand for generative AI-focused roles and skills skyrocket on our marketplace. Businesses of all sizes are coming to Upwork for AI talent spanning roles from prompt engineers and AI model trainers to researchers and code checkers. AI was the fastest-growing category on Upwork in the first half of 2023, in terms of total individuals hired, and generative AI job posts on our platform are up more than 1000% when comparing the second quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2022, when the generative AI boom took off.
Upwork is already home to some of the most skilled talent in the world, including the likes of Arun Godwin Patel and Guy Pistone, who are both deeply experienced and actively working on the real-world problems and opportunities that businesses face as they grapple with how to approach this exciting new technology. Arun is a generative AI specialist using AI, data science, and machine learning to help companies solve real-world business problems like combining virtual reality, AI, and sensors into a personalized mental health management system. Guy has been working with AI for many years, and through the business he has built on Upwork, now manages a team of more than 100 around the world that has many noteworthy accomplishments, including recently partnering with a major hospital on an AI project for Alzheimer's research.
Incredible talent on Upwork motivated us to launch the new AI Services hub, where independent professionals who blaze the trail through these emergent technologies like Arun, Guy, and so many others, can be discovered and engaged. In the AI Services hub, we have also gathered key resources to answer some of the biggest questions we are hearing from our customers—like how businesses can scale the talent and strategies they need to take on their most ambitious AI initiatives—as well as AI-related research we’ve published that’s been making headlines with some surprising findings.
We know that the best professionals require the best tools, and we are in a unique position to enable talent on the Upwork marketplace with differentiated access to tools, offers, and insights related to technologies that supercharge their work. Critically, better tools mean better outcomes for clients, greater productivity, and higher earnings (or more free time!) for talent. To ensure professionals on Upwork are the most AI-enabled talent in the world, we will offer talent on Upwork opportunities to directly access a range of generative AI tools, to learn about and get hands-on experience with these technologies.
To that end, today we are introducing an exclusive 30-day free trial of Jasper generative AI services for copywriting, marketing, and image creation available to all talent on Upwork, so that they can increase their productivity, communicate more effectively with clients, and elevate the quality of their work. As we evolve our third-party partnerships and offers, we will also share insights with talent about how the most advanced, expert professionals in their fields are putting these emergent tools into practice and delivering against clients’ most pressing business needs.
For years, we have leveraged AI in our search and discovery, customer support, and fraud detection and prevention efforts. More than 20 years of data combined with advances in machine learning have enabled us to provide specialized, targeted client-talent search results and matches and continuously reduce the time from job need to job completion. More recently, we have leveraged large language models (LLMs) and conversational interfaces to make the Upwork experience even more powerful. While our innovation engine continues to rev with experimentation to improve user experiences across our platform and the entire continuum of work, today we’re excited to announce new beta features powered by OpenAI technologies as part of a more generative AI-infused end-to-end customer experience, including:
These innovations take us another step forward in delivering on our promise to help people get work done better, faster and more efficiently on Upwork than they can anywhere else.
We see tremendous possibilities ahead, underscored by the work that pioneering talent on Upwork are already doing as well as our efforts to deploy a full range of AI-based solutions that generate even greater value for our customers across industries and around the world. We are privileged to continue serving such a diverse community of talent and businesses, and we’ll continue to partner with and listen to our customers to provide the features and flexibility they need to get work done in the way that suits them best. It’s never been a more energizing time to be at the nexus of the tools, technology, and talent that organizations of all types require to navigate their own generative AI journeys, and to ultimately work, smarter.
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