From Hype to Reality: 5 Key Moments from the 2025 Deel AI Summit

The AI Summit brought together experts to talk about AI and its impact on the future of work. We focused on cutting through the noise and offering practical advice for the next steps of AI adoption in HR, payroll, and much more.

• Introduction with Nick Catino, Global Head of Policy at Deel
• Keynote: The AI Workforce Has Arrived with Aaron Goldsmid, GM, Head of Product at Deel
• Panel: AI in Hiring & HR: What Works, What’s Next with Alan Price, Director of Talent Acquisition at Deel, Siadhal Magos, CEO of MetaView.AI, and Vijay Mani, CEO of Covey
• AMA: Applied AI for Business Leaders with Anne-Marie Clifton, Director of Product, AI & Agents at Zapier
• AI in Action: Deel AI and Deel AI Workforce with Jase Assor, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Deel
• Lightning round: Expert takes in 5 minutes

Here, we’ve pulled the five key takeaways you don’t want to miss. But to not miss a single insight, catch up on the full recording right here.

1. AI has moved from experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment

The opening of the summit made it clear that AI adoption has passed the experimentation phase and entered a period of real operational impact. Drawing on Deel’s 2025 AI policy report and an IDC InfoBrief, commissioned by Deel, surveying 5,500 business and IT leaders across 22 countries, Nick Catino shared that 70% of organizations have moved beyond AI pilots, while 91% report that roles have already changed or been displaced by AI. These numbers underscore a fundamental shift: AI is no longer a future consideration, but a present-day force actively reshaping how work is done across industries.

Rather than asking abstract questions about AI’s potential, businesses are now focused on practical outcomes—ROI, workforce planning, and budget implications for the years ahead. The data also revealed early labor market signals, including slower entry-level hiring and increased internal reskilling, with two-thirds of companies investing in AI training independently. The message from the introduction was clear: organizations that delay meaningful AI adoption risk falling behind as competitors rapidly redesign roles, workflows, and workforce strategies.

2. The modern workforce now includes AI teammates—not just tools

In the keynote, Aaron Goldsmid framed AI as the next evolution of the global workforce, following the shift from local to remote to globally distributed teams. The defining change, he argued, is that AI is no longer just software people use. It is becoming a teammate who actively participates in getting work done. At Deel, this takes shape through AI systems that handle complex HR, payroll, and compliance tasks across 150 countries, enabling organizations to operate globally with greater speed and confidence.

What distinguishes Deel AI Workforce is its emphasis on trust, transparency, and human control. Rather than opaque automation, every AI-driven action is auditable, reversible, and designed with clear escalation paths. This approach allows teams to increase impact without increasing headcount, while ensuring compliance and accountability remain intact. The keynote reinforced a central theme of the summit: AI’s role is not to replace people, but to help them work smarter, faster, and more fairly in an increasingly complex global environment.

3. AI is transforming recruiting, but the human role is becoming more strategic, not smaller

During the hiring and HR panel, leaders from Deel, MetaView.AI, and Covey discussed how AI is already reshaping recruiting at scale. AI now enables faster and more accurate top-of-funnel screening, flexible interpretation of job requirements, and deeper interview insights, helping recruiters surface strong candidates who might otherwise be overlooked. These capabilities dramatically reduce manual effort while improving match quality and decision-making speed.

Crucially, the panel emphasized that this shift elevates rather than diminishes the recruiter’s role. As AI handles volume and analysis, recruiters are evolving into strategic advisors who understand talent markets, guide hiring managers, and build meaningful candidate relationships. Smaller, leaner teams can now support more roles simultaneously while focusing on the nuanced, human aspects of hiring that technology cannot replace, such as trust-building, judgment, and long-term talent strategy.

4. Fair, human-centered hiring requires intentional AI design and governance

While AI holds promise for reducing bias in hiring, the panel was clear that fairness is not automatic. Without structured audits, ongoing evaluation, and clearly defined guardrails, AI systems can unintentionally reinforce existing patterns or create “talent cloning,” where only narrowly defined profiles are favored. Recruiters and HR leaders must remain actively involved, ensuring AI supports, not substitutes, thoughtful human judgment.

When implemented responsibly, AI can actually make hiring feel more human. By automating repetitive, low-value tasks, recruiters gain time to engage candidates more personally and assess critical factors like values alignment, team chemistry, and cultural fit. The panel reinforced that recruitment is ultimately about people, not just skills—and that AI works best when it amplifies human insight rather than attempting to replace it.

5. Real AI transformation comes from rethinking outcomes—not just automating tasks

In the AMA session, Anne-Marie Clifton highlighted a key distinction between organizations seeing incremental gains from AI and those achieving true transformation. The most successful teams are not asking how AI can speed up existing processes, but rethinking what outcomes they want to achieve and how work should flow in an AI-enabled organization. This mindset shift allows teams to reduce handoffs, unlock cross-domain expertise, and redesign entire workflows rather than layering automation on top of legacy systems.

Anne-Marie outlined a four-part framework to support this transformation: leadership commitment, AI-fluent talent and culture, democratized access to tools, and strong governance. As organizations explore agentic AI, she stressed the importance of human-in-the-loop design and clear accountability. Perhaps most importantly, she identified communication as a core skill for the AI era, noting that working effectively with AI forces teams to clarify intent, assumptions, and reasoning, often improving how humans collaborate in the process.

Catch up on the AI Summit

At the AI Summit, we dived into how AI is already helping inside Deel. It supports you when you hire, when you pay people, when you answer compliance questions, when you review expenses, and even when you create learning content.

Now that you’ve had a taste of the knowledge shared by our expert speakers, catch up on the full summit recording here. You’ll get two hours of non-stop AI insights, practical advice, and lessons from the field. Whether you’re a leader seeking direction or a worker wanting to gain a competitive edge, AI Summit has something for you.

If you'd like to see more about how Deel AI can supercharge your HR, IT, and Finance teams, book your 30-minute Deel demo.