Box Inc. is burnishing its platform of artificial intelligence (AI) agents to rev up workflows and beef up security within enterprises.
At the company’s annual BoxWorks conference in San Francisco on Thursday, the company introduced Box Extract, an AI-powered data-extraction platform that captures and analyzes information from documents, presentations, and visual media; Box Automate, an intelligent workflow automation system that coordinates collaborative processes between AI agents and human teams across industries such as finance, healthcare, legal services, government, and education sectors; and enhanced Box Apps, a no-code application development platform, now integrated with advanced AI functionality.
“We’re in an exciting evolution of what AI agents can do,” Ben Kus, chief technology officer at Box, said in a video interview. “The underlying theme here is that as models get smarter, they can do more in workflows — especially productivity — for things like, say, loan processing.”
The introduction of the trio of productivity agents is “helps organizations unlock structured data, drive intelligent automation, and empower users with actionable insights — all while maintaining enterprise-grade security and compliance,” said Amy Machado, senior research manager, content and knowledge management strategies at IDC.
Additionally, the company announced Box Shield Pro, a powerful new suite of AI security capabilities that builds on Box’s flagship content protection solution, Box Shield.
Agents within Box Shield Pro include AI Classification Agent, which leverages advanced content analysis to autonomously categorize sensitive materials by identifying data patterns, contextual indicators, and compliance parameters specific to each organization; AI Threat Analysis Agent, which streamlines security operations by automatically producing clear, actionable summaries for each threat notification; and Ransomware Activity Detection, proactive protection across Box Drive and the entire Box ecosystem that identifes mass file encryption events.
Deepak Budwani, chief financial and administrative officer at the Santa Barbara County Office of the Public Defender, said the security upgrade “helps us proactively safeguard sensitive content without disrupting the way our legal teams work.”
Box’s news comes amid industrywide debate over the immediate return on investment of AI use among corporations, a point that has only intensified after the recent release of high-profile studies from MIT and Stanford University that show initial disappointment over bottom-line results in AI and its impact on entry-level job openings.
Several AI company CEOs have voiced skepticism over the findings of the MIT report, which found 95% of generative AI pilot programs at companies have little or no impact on the bottom line, and Stanford research that revealed early-career employees (ages 22 to 25) in AI-exposed fields endured a 13% drop in employment since 2022, compared with more experienced workers in the same industries.
