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Oracle adds generative AI to its human resources software

Move aims to help draft job descriptions and employee performance goals

Oracle Corp on Wednesday said it is adding generative artificial intelligence features to its human resources software for businesses, aiming to help draft job descriptions and employee performance goals, among other tasks.

AI systems like ChatGPT that can generate human-like answers to prompts have taken the technology sector by storm, with companies including Microsoft Corp and Alphabet's Google integrating them into search engines.

Many business users have approached generative AI technology more cautiously because it can make up untrue facts and be tricked into saying unsettling things.

Oracle's human resources software is used by big businesses for hiring new employees and providing performance evaluations, among other things. Oracle will put a button on many of the fields in the software that will automatically generate draft text for things like job listings or performance goals.

Putting the AI assistant in the form of a button rather than chatbot that answers open-ended prompts written by human users is meant to ensure the buttons "produce a good result and a safe result," said Rich Buchheim, vice president of product management for Oracle Adaptive Intelligence Applications.

Buchheim said the resulting text will still need to be approved by a human.

"We don't expect generative AI is going to write your goals for you. It's going to give you a starting place, and it's going to give you useful information that you can get going with," Buchheim said.

The features are expected to roll out by the end of this year.

Guy Waterman, vice president of people analytics and human capital management technology and innovation at Oracle, said further into the future, Oracle is working on how to use AI for more complex human resources tasks, like how to write listings of job requirements that comply with local regulations in different markets.

"It may have taken a week or two weeks for someone to make a decision and then implement it. If we can change that to hours and minutes, that's where we're really seeing the difference with the possibilities of generative AI," Waterman said.