Salesforce survey shows extensive personal use of AI in the Philippines is driving trust and confidence in AI tools

With 45% of knowledge workers expecting to use AI to both augment and automate tasks, organizations in the Philippines must prioritize AI-fluency 

Manila, March 26, 2026 — Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 AI CRM, revealed new research at the Agentforce World Tour Manila 2026 showing that knowledge workers’ use of AI in their personal lives, not top-down corporate mandates, is driving trust and confidence in using AI at work. 68% of knowledge workers said that their personal use of AI has increased their trust in using AI tools at work. With increasing personal use, the time is ripe for enterprises in the Philippines to drive enterprise AI adoption and value by creating an AI-fluent workforce. 

With trust in AI on the rise, 70% of knowledge workers in the Philippines said that their personal use of AI has increased their confidence in using AI tools at work.  This trust and confidence is highest among Gen Z, with 74% reporting that personal AI use positively impacts their perception of AI at work.

The survey, conducted by YouGov and commissioned by Salesforce, surveyed 1,057 knowledge workers in the Philippines to understand workers’ attitudes and perceptions of AI/agentic AI. 

Skills and knowledge gap poses risk to enterprise value

Nearly all knowledge workers in the Philippines expect to use AI and AI agents at work, and for their jobs to change to some degree. Only 3% of knowledge workers in the Philippines expect never to use AI agents, while over 56% are already using AI agents to help them perform better, faster, or more creatively. However, despite clear openness to adopting agentic AI, a skills and knowledge gap is emerging, which can prevent businesses from activating Agentic AI to its fullest extent.

Almost half of (48%) Filipino knowledge workers want a better understanding of the skills they need to develop for the AI era, with the majority receiving limited training on agentic AI:

• Only 34% of knowledge workers in the Philippines say their company is training them on how to use AI agents
• Only 31% of workers say their company is investing in new tools and forums for peer-to-peer AI agent knowledge sharing
• Only 22% are encouraging managers and executives to share how they use AI agents as a model/example

Companies that fail to provide workers with access to enterprise-grade AI solutions risk a rise in shadow AI—the use of unapproved tools that operate outside the organization’s visibility or control. This lack of visibility creates significant security vulnerabilities, most notably the exposure of sensitive data. A skills gap can further exacerbate these risks: when employees with limited training use AI without mastering prompt engineering or fact-checking outputs, they inadvertently introduce inaccuracies and run into compliance issues.

“The growing trust in AI across the Philippines is being driven from the bottom up, with personal curiosity currently outpacing corporate strategy,” said Abraham Cuevas, Country General Manager, Salesforce Philippines. “However, individual use alone doesn’t translate into enterprise-scale impact. With the government committing PHP 2.6B to AI projects by 2028, businesses must act now to fuel our national transformation from a service economy into a knowledge-driven innovation hub and capture the projected PHP 2.8 trillion in productivity gains from AI. The Filipino workforce is ready; it is now up to organizations to provide the secure, enterprise-grade frameworks and skills support that turn personal experimentation into a coordinated engine for growth and innovation in the Agentic Enterprise.”

Knowledge workers in ASEAN are ready to collaborate with AI as long as there is transparency and access to quality tools

When asked how AI will impact their work in the future, 45% of knowledge workers said they expect to use AI agents to both automate some tasks and augment others. 26% believe human-to-AI collaboration skills will be crucial in the future.

With human-AI collaboration increasingly a given, knowledge workers in the Philippines want clarity and high-quality tools to feel confident using AI agents.  The top three factors that will make knowledge workers feel more confident using AI agents at work are: 

• High level of transparency and control – knowing what actions the AI agent took and why (43%) 
• Easy access to approved, high-quality tools (46%)
• Understanding of skills workers should develop (48%) 

Other factors include explicit reassurance from companies that human skills will remain central to work and strong guardrails to ensure security, privacy, and compliance (33%).

Abraham Cuevas added, “Our study shows that workers in the Philippines are willing to embrace AI, but this is only the first step. What we need now is AI fluency: the ability to confidently collaborate with AI to drive business impact at speed and scale. With Filipino knowledge workers already expecting to use AI agents to both automate and augment their roles, the mandate for organizations is clear. Providing transparency, access to tools, and skills development gives employees the agency to not only use AI, but to fundamentally redesign the way they work for the Agentic Enterprise.”

Rising stakes: The AI-first consumer in the Philippines

The research also acts as a reminder for businesses: knowledge workers’ personal use of AI is raising their expectations as consumers, making AI a competitive necessity. 46% of knowledge workers now expect faster, more efficient services, while 41% expect greater accuracy and fewer errors from the businesses they interact with. Over 41% expect more innovative or intelligent solutions. 

Only 12% of respondents said that their expectations remained unchanged.

Helping Philippine businesses transform into Agentic Enterprises 

To help Philippine businesses respond to these growing expectations of both workers and consumers while realizing tangible business value from agentic AI, Salesforce brought its Agentforce World Tour to Manila. As the complete operating system for the Agentic Enterprise, the company showcased Agentforce, which brings humans, agents, apps, and data together on one trusted, unified platform. Its four-layer platform — context, work, agency, and engagement — provides the essential infrastructure required to convert raw intelligence into real work, and to move beyond individual agency to enterprise agency, with thousands of agents and humans orchestrating and performing complex tasks across teams, functions, and companies. 

The event featured inspiring keynotes, a campground with live demos, and innovative product and industry-specific sessions to help organizations succeed in the agentic AI era. Customers such as AXA Philippines, Ayala Land, and PLDT Inc. shared insights into their digital transformations with Salesforce. 

Key survey highlights:

• AI use cuts across generations. While Millennials lead in AI use, GenZ and GenX are not too far behind
  • Among knowledge workers surveyed, Millennials’ use of AI at work outpaces GenZ and GenX by just 6 percentage points on average.
  • GenX (45%) is more likely to view AI agents as an enabler, allowing them to work outside their area of expertise, than Millennials (31%) and GenZ (33%)

• Philippines knowledge workers have interacted with or are using AI agents at work, and expect significant benefits from using agents 
  • 76% of knowledge workers in the Philippines have interacted with or are using agentic AI at work, and the majority (75%) agree that their job will change at least moderately as tasks are shared with AI agents
  • 53% of knowledge workers in the Philippines expect AI to enhance their speed of completing tasks, while 35% expect to enhance the quality of their work using AI 
  • 45% of knowledge workers in the Philippines expect to use AI agents to enhance their performance at work, beyond simple automation (13%)

• The top three ways in which AI agents are currently augmenting workers in the Philippines 
  • Providing quick access to information, eliminating the need for extensive research (53%)
  • Assisting with writing and communication, saving me time and effort (49%)
  • Helping me brainstorm ideas and overcome creativity block (44%) 

• Top three job skills workers believe will be most crucial in the Agentic Enterprise era 
  • Creative thinking (35%) 
  • Data analysis and interpretation (34%) 
  • Problem solving (33%) 

Methodology

This study was conducted online by YouGov in February – March 2026, gathering data from 1,057 respondents from the Philippines, segmented by generation: Gen Z (n=426, ages 17 to 29), Millennials (n=485, ages 30 to 45), Gen X (n=142, ages 46 to 61), and Baby Boomers (n=4, ages 62 to 80). All respondents work full-time in “knowledge work” roles (e.g., finance, marketing, IT, law, education, research, healthcare administration, consulting), up to middle management. 

Business sizes are defined as follows: Small (1-49 employees), Medium (50-199 employees), Large (200-499 employees), and Extra Large (500+ employees).