Rephrase and rearrange the whole content into a news article. I want you to respond only in language English. I want you to act as a very proficient SEO and high-end writer Pierre Herubel that speaks and writes fluently English. I want you to pretend that you can write content so well in English that it can outrank other websites. Make sure there is zero plagiarism.: In the aftermath of the large language model (LLM) revolution last year, a new fascination has emerged among developers and tech enthusiasts around AI “agents,” which are capable of executing complex tasks autonomously.  Newo.ai, a new Silicon Valley company, today launched a service that integrates these intelligent agents into the physical realm of robots, blurring the lines between digital and human workers. Co-founded by Chinese-Armenian serial entrepreneur David Yang, Newo.ai is attempting to redefine the concept of the workplace. Its service combines the advanced capabilities of LLM-driven agents with the versatility of physical robots to create “digital employees” — virtual workers adept at handling a wide range of office tasks, from administrative duties to customer engagement. In exclusive interviews with VentureBeat, Yang and co-founder Ljubov Ovtsinnikova revealed the progress they’ve made so far and their vision for the future.  VB Event The AI Impact Tour – NYC We’ll be in New York on February 29 in partnership with Microsoft to discuss how to balance risks and rewards of AI applications. Request an invite to the exclusive event below.   Request an invite Newo’s innovation: An AI agent builder It might be easy to get fixated on the physical robot part of this, but Newo’s real innovation lies in its AI agent builder platform. This builder lets companies replicate the intelligence of an entry-level human worker “out of the box,” one that can do pretty much any office administrative tasks that a human employee can. It can make and receive phone calls, chat over text, send emails, join Zoom calls, take notes and even receive walk-in customers in an office. Depending on what a business needs, it can take between two hours and two days to customize the programming of Newo digital workers for most jobs – where the worker can do all essential tasks required of receptionists, sales agents, technical support and customer success specialists, or HR operators.  As for the physical side, Newo’s agent can be embedded into any open robot form a customer chooses. One of Newo’s defaults is Moxie, a robot from a company called Embodied that specializes in individual interaction. But more on this in a bit.  “Before 2023, technologies were not flexible or autonomous enough to be ‘hired,’” said Yang. But with Newo.AI, “you are hiring an employee that can understand the complexity of your business, and that will adapt.”  Such agents can replace some 300 million jobs, said Yang, citing a Goldman Sachs report last year. That makes this a trillion-dollar market, he said. However, he’s careful to note that he believes there won’t be 300 million humans unemployed. Job vacancies are growing at rates faster than humans can fill them. So he sees Newo’s agents fulfilling millions of basic jobs, freeing up humans to do higher-value jobs.  Newo, which has 25 employees, says it already has 23 paying customers that have used the product under open beta, including the SoliVana Wellness Spa in Redwood City, the Mayweather Fitness & Boxing, Fuse Service and Edeal. With today’s launch, Newo says it can take another 500 customers on a first-come, first-serve basis. It plans to be open to anyone starting in April or May. Its customers have expressed the most interest in pre-sales and sales consultant roles, followed by customer support, the company said. Until now, even the most breakthrough technologies, Yang said, were confined to helping as productivity tools, or completing specific, refined tasks where a company’s IT department, CTO, or CFO would sign off on them. The problem with productivity tools like CRM or ERP tools, Yang said, is that no matter how good they are, they require a business and its human employees to adjust their behavior to use the technology. This can mean long implementation cycles. By contrast, a digital employee doesn’t require a business to change its processes.  Newo’s focus on the intellectual part of this digital employee is why the physical robot part of it can be relatively flexible, and determined by the end-user. Newo has therefore not built its own proprietary robot, preferring instead to work with partners as suppliers. The physical form doesn’t have to take a humanoid form, or even a robotic form. The Newo digital worker could fit into any form factor, including an avatar on a screen, or an image on a foot-long cube, as seen in the image below. The Newo digital employee can be embodied in several forms. Some examples: Moxie robot, left; avatar on screen, middle; the WeBox by SmartCom Global, right. SoliVana Wellness Spa found it “impossible” to hire a human Take an early customer, SoliVana Wellness Spa, in Redwood City. Co-owner Natasha Berness opened the spa a few months ago, with a vision of helping customers relax and stay centered in their lives. She has hired the Newo agent to do many of her tasks, but she’s still deciding what physical format to use for Newo in her office – she’s trying out the Talking Head screen or the Talking Head WeBox, after deciding the Moxie robot might come across as too childish for her clients   But Berness, who had left a career as a technology executive at companies like IBM, Linkedin, and Levi-Strauss, says she is excited about getting Newo to take over many of her tasks as a new business owner. Newo is already handling calls, booking appointments and taking payments. In an interview with VentureBeat, Berness said she was surprised by how difficult it was to be a small business manager. She saw inefficiencies everywhere, and “it was impossible to hire somebody,” she said, referring to the limited number of people who wanted to work at a spa and who were attentive and knowledgeable enough to provide the service that met Berness’ standards. Also, the risks and costs of hiring humans are high, she said. “You can teach them, but they leave tomorrow,” Berness said. “They’re not reliable. Something happens to their dog, and they can’t show up.”    Newo worker now an “invaluable” member of the team Moreover, Berness said, customers enjoyed asking her health questions, for example, how to meditate, or how to breathe, or whether she might put something nice on a wall. She found she didn’t have time to continually help all of her customers, and even if she had time, she often couldn’t visit them in their rooms because they were naked. She wanted something reliable to guide her customers, but more than a generic ChatGPT agent – something that understood her wellness business, and could listen to and remember customers’ unique needs, and respond to them by offering relevant therapies. When a client told her about Yang’s company, Berness became a user of Newo’s closed beta product last year.  “I can finally enjoy my weekends as an owner,” she said.  Soon, the Newo employee will be able to handle the reception while her human therapists are busy with customers. Already, she says it has become an invaluable member of the team. She looks forward to the day when she can use the Newo agent with a humanoid robot that can change and fold towels, wash floors and open doors.  Newo aims to make its worker compatible with any of the humanoid robots about to hit the market, for example, Digit, the robot being built by the Oregon company Agility Robots, That company has received more than $150 million from Amazon and others to mass produce up to 10,000 Digits a year. Other humanoid robots are being produced by companies including  1X Technologies, Figure AI, Sanctuary AI, Tesla’s Optimus, and Stanford’s ALOHA.) Costs of Newo.ai digital employees remain much lower than human worker Even when the Newo digital worker includes the cost of a physical robot, its price remains a bargain when compared to a human worker, Yang said. SoliVana’s Berness estimates a human worker costs her $90,000, but many entry-level receptionist jobs pay much less, at around $50,000. By contrast, even the most complex Newo employees will remain below $20,000, even including the cost of…