There’s a lot of anxiety around this report across the Internet… but I’m far more optimistic having been through several disruptions in my career. I’m not trying to downplay how impactful this may be, but I want to bring some positive points to the conversation.
People are using Copilot to provide services for the execution of knowledge work activities, and do so disproportionately often relative to the fraction of knowledge work in the workforce.
Microsoft Research
Marketing and sales leaders are no strangers to disruption. From the dawn of digital advertising to the rise of CRM and automation platforms, each wave of innovation has challenged teams to rethink how they engage customers, generate demand, and close deals. The latest disruption… AI, generative AI (GenAI), and, more specifically, agentic AI are of a different order. It isn’t just another tool; it’s a new collaborator in the workplace.
The new report from Microsoft Research, Working with AI, provides one of the most comprehensive analyses yet of how real-world AI usage is already reshaping job activities. Its conclusions point to an optimistic, but urgent reality: AI is not replacing entire roles, but it is reshaping the work inside them. Nowhere is this truer than in marketing and sales, where tasks involving communication, content generation, research, and customer interaction dominate. These are precisely the domains where AI is demonstrating the most excellent applicability and effectiveness.
Table of Contents
Augmentation Over Automation
Our data indicate that AI can help users with a broader fraction of their work than it can perform directly.
Microsoft Research
Contrary to the fear that AI will automate people out of their jobs, the data reveals a more nuanced—and promising—story. The most common AI interactions observed in the study involve assisting with writing, gathering information, and communicating ideas. While AI is capable of performing some tasks (especially explanatory or advisory ones), it more often supports professionals in accomplishing their goals faster and with better quality.
For marketing and sales professionals, this means:
- Copywriters will still write, but with AI acting as a first-draft partner, ideation tool, or editor.
- Sales reps will still prospect, but AI can enrich contacts, suggest outreach strategies, and personalize communications at scale.
- Brand strategists will still ideate, but AI can analyze market data, competitive positioning, and content performance to inform stronger campaigns.
High Applicability in Knowledge and Communication Work
The current capabilities of generative AI align most strongly with knowledge work and communication occupations.
Microsoft Research
Among all professions, sales, marketing, PR, content creation, and customer service roles rank highest in AI applicability. This is no coincidence. These occupations rely heavily on activities like providing information to others, responding to inquiries, writing materials, and presenting ideas—all tasks where AI has demonstrated strong success rates and broad coverage.
This chart illustrates how specific work tasks—such as providing customer information, editing written materials, or product promotion—relate to various jobs across marketing, sales, customer service, and content roles. It visually maps the overlap between the tasks generative AI is already performing or assisting with and the jobs most affected by those tasks.
Tasks like responding to inquiries or writing content apply not only to customer service representatives and sales reps but also to editors, PR specialists, and product promoters. The more connections a job has to these tasks, the more likely it is to be transformed by AI today.
A New Division of Labor
The AI tends to do more advising and teaching, whereas the user side involves more obtaining information, reading, and researching.
Microsoft Research
Agentic AI, capable of autonomous task execution through multistep planning and decision-making, is pushing this collaboration further. In sales and marketing workflows, we’re beginning to see AI not just help write copy or summarize customer notes, but initiate and complete multistep actions: launching nurture campaigns, triaging inbound leads, or even assembling competitive battlecards.
This evolution creates a new division of labor:
- AI excels at repetitive, informational, and procedural tasks.
- Humans remain essential for judgment, creativity, empathy, and strategic decision-making.
The implication? Teams can shift their focus toward higher-order thinking and relationship-building, while offloading repetitive tasks to AI agents. This will elevate roles—turning sales development reps into pipeline strategists, and content marketers into creative directors.
New Skills, New Teams
We find higher AI applicability for occupations requiring a Bachelor’s degree than occupations with lower requirements… however, our data indicate a wide range of potential impact across the wage and education distributions.
Microsoft Research
Marketing and sales organizations will need to adapt not only in what they do, but in who does it—and how. The future workforce will need a blend of domain expertise and AI fluency. Teams will need people who can prompt effectively, review AI-generated insights critically, and orchestrate AI agents alongside human workflows.
This means:
- Training and reskilling become strategic priorities. Everyone from account managers to content creators will need basic AI literacy.
- Job descriptions will evolve. Future marketing teams may include roles like “AI Campaign Orchestrator” or “Customer Journey Modeler.”
- Hiring profiles will shift. Problem-solving, communication, and adaptability—already key traits—will be even more prized as AI reshapes job scopes.
Leadership Implications
It remains to be seen how different occupations refactor their work responsibilities in response to AI’s rapid progress.
Microsoft Research
For CMOs, CROs, and their leadership teams, the takeaway is clear: AI is here, and your teams are already using it. But passive adoption isn’t enough. Leaders must actively steer the transition, ensuring that AI doesn’t just make the same work faster—it makes the business fundamentally more innovative.
Key leadership actions include:
- Audit your team’s AI usage today. Understand where it’s delivering value—and where it’s being underused.
- Identify high-impact workflows ripe for agentic automation. Think campaign execution, lead qualification, performance reporting.
- Build AI governance into your marketing and sales operations. Ensure transparency, ethical use, and data integrity in how AI is applied.
- Foster a culture of experimentation. Encourage teams to co-create with AI, test new approaches, and learn from each iteration.
Marketing and sales will always be about influence, relationships, and persuasion. These are innately human strengths. But in this new era, professionals who embrace AI as a force multiplier—not a threat—will be those who rise.
Download the full Microsoft Research report to better understand how these insights can inform your strategic roadmap.
Download Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI
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