High wire acts, Microsoft Clippy, and DIY AI at Dreamforce 2024

Watching Pink soar above crowds at Oracle Park during an acrobatic rendition of ‘So What’ seemed an appropriate finale to Dreamforce 2024, especially given Salesforce’s ambitious new strategy was described as a “high wire act” by CEO Marc Benioff.

It’s been nearly two years since generative AI burst onto the scene, and while the early days may have been exciting, at this point I’m sure most of us are absolutely sick to death hearing about it.

Virtually every tech conference was saturated by generative AI last year and this has kept so far across 2024, too. It’s become tiring.

To say Dreamforce was no different would be harsh. Yes, AI was the big talking point again, but something about it felt different. First and foremost, Salesforce didn’t actually use the term ‘AI’ too heavily, especially given that its big announcement was centered around the technology.

‘AI agents’, we learned, are the new big thing in the world of AI. And it’s not just a newfangled piece of corporate jargon either. If Benioff is to be believed, agents are the future of AI.

Salesforce’s big gambit in the coming years now rests on its new Agentforce service. This allows customers to create AI agents that essentially carry out tasks on behalf of a worker. From customer service to healthcare and retail, Salesforce thinks everyone will be using agents within a year or two.

Whether or not this strategy pays off is unclear and another discussion entirely, but what is clear is that Benioff is very excited and fiercely protective of his new vision.

Salesforce goes for the competition

During the opening keynote, Benioff fired a broadside at Microsoft over the supposedly poor performance of its flagship Copilot service, referring to it – and others – as ‘DIY AI’ that simply hadn’t delivered on grandiose promises.

Organizations are wasting money trying to build AI solutions with popular large language models (LLMs) and failing miserably, attendees were told. Making matters worse, the outputs from popular LLMs are substandard and unreliable while hallucinations are still wreaking havoc.

The statement was bold, but the follow-up was bizarre. Asking the crowd if they knew what DIY was, he suggested it may just be a “San Francisco thing”.

I find it hard to picture Benioff upcycling IKEA bookshelves, but you never know.

Regardless, Salesforce’s latest pitch now rests on the idea that big tech vendors have shoved generative AI copilots down the throats of enterprises while promising to make their dreams come true. Worse still, they’re placing too much burden on customers by just dropping tools in their lap and sauntering off with a big cheque.

Agents are the new frontier and the next step, according to Benioff. But some may wonder how they’re actually any different to a copilot or general AI assistant.

Hot on the heels of the opening keynote, a Bloomberg journalist said the quiet part out loud, asking whether Agentforce represented a “meaningful new step” and not just a Copilot rebrand – and this set the tone for the rest of the press briefing.

Benioff went all-in on the criticism of Microsoft, describing Copilot as nothing better than Microsoft Clippy before slamming the capabilities of ChatGPT.

While the comments were jarring, it has to be said they were equally refreshing. Maybe Microsoft and OpenAI have shared too much of the limelight these last 18 months. Google can’t publicize a product announcement without OpenAI nudging the company out of the spotlight with its own tactical announcements.

Hoisting Microsoft up as the gold standard when there are obvious issues at play must be frustrating for other industry players.

Benioff appears to have real confidence alongside his desire to make a statement. We’ve come to expect the bold, brazen comments from the Salesforce CEO over the years, but this year it was critical he made it clear the company means business.

In the week prior to Dreamforce, Klarna revealed it planned to cut ties with Salesforce and replace the CRM provider with AI tools developed in-house. Benioff openly questioned this decision and challenged the firm to explain how it could replace all the functions of a CRM through AI.

This marked the latest lingering question mark for the company in recent months. A blog post from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in July raised doubts over whether Salesforce can maintain a competitive edge in the era of generative AI.

The post, titled ‘Death of a Salesforce’: Why AI Will Transform the Next Generation of Sales Tech’, suggested that generative AI could have a major transformational impact on the “core system of record and the sales workflows”, meaning that “no incumbent is safe”.

As the incumbent in this space, it’s not hard to see why the Agentforce announcement was so critical for Salesforce and Benioff.