Freelancer – executive interview

In this interview, Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer, discusses the transformative potential of agentic AI, a technology designed to automate repetitive workflows such as customer support and sales. He explains that agentic AI represents the next major wave of business transformation after web and app development, delivering hyper-realistic, multilingual interactions available 24/7 and enabling businesses of all sizes to deploy AI agents for tasks traditionally handled by humans. Freelancer is both integrating agentic AI into its own platform and offering businesses access to 80 million freelancers to build AI solutions. Matt emphasises that AI will elevate freelancer skills rather than replace them, creating new opportunities and boosting productivity across industries. He notes that implementing agentic AI is highly accessible, with costs comparable to building a website or app, and predicts widespread adoption within two to three years. The interview concludes with Barrie demonstrating an AI agent for Edison Group, created in less than 10 minutes.