Freshworks taps generative AI wave, launches Freddy Copilot for developers

Freshworks co-founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham.

SaaS major Freshworks made a further push in the field of Generative artificial intelligence (AI) by introducing 'Freddy Copilot' on June 21, an add-on feature designed to enhance the developer experience. This tool helps coders in eliminating mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on app development and other core functions.

"Improving developer experience has always been key to us and we are very excited to announce the Freddy Copilot product for developers. Now all the mundane work will go to Gen AI and developers can focus on innovations," said Girish Mathrubootham, cofounder and CEO of Freshworks.

Mathrubootham was speaking at Freshworks' Developer Summit 2023, held in Bengaluru on June 21. The theme was centred around how developers can tap the opportunities emerging through AI.

The firm held its first Developer Summit in 2022 in Bengaluru where the overarching theme was Low-code, no-code and API integration.

This year, the event saw about 800 developers register from different software firms and the independent freelance community.

On Wednesday, Freshworks also launched two Gen AI capabilities for its enterprise customers, Freddy Self Service and Freddy Insights.  Freddy Self-Service offloads monotonous work to bots to scale support and promises to deliver better customer experiences.

Freddy Insights automates the analysis of customers' daily productivity and
provides recommendations to drive greater business impact.

Freshworks chose to integrate Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service into Freddy AI solutions to ensure the privacy and security of Freshworks customers' data, the firm said in a media statement.

In 2018, Freshworks launched Freddy, an AI chat/omnibot engine that enhances the sales, support, and marketing capabilities of businesses of all sizes. Freddy leverages Google AI technology, such as Google Assistant, to help businesses resolve customer issues more effectively through a mix of human and machine-based voice interactions.

Freddy Copilot is an extension of this AI that helps developers learn faster with chat-based tutorials, instant code generation, and one-click actions.

Freddy Copilot is currently available in beta for developers. The company is offering the feature for free for now, but they plan to roll out a pricing plan in the coming days.

This comes at a time when industry experts in India and around the world are riding the generative AI wave.

In fact, Mathrubootham recently told Moneycontrol that the firm will make significant investments to integrate AI, especially generative AI, into its operations.

However, experts have also warned that developers' jobs could be at risk with the growth of generative AI like ChatGPT.

A recent report by Goldman Sachs estimates that approximately 300 million global jobs could be exposed to automation, and one-fourth of all work could be replaced by generative AI.

With chatbots now able to write content and create visuals, AI threatens to disrupt jobs like designers and software engineers and take over a wide range of repetitive tasks handled by humans.

Founded in 2010, Freshworks' core area is customer support, but it has also expanded its focus into areas that include sales, marketing, IT service management, and HR.

All of its products are enabled by its Neo platform, which also runs a marketplace where external developers can tap Freshworks resources to build their apps.