With virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and other chatbots augmenting human performance in many organisations, about 70 per cent institutions would integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) at workplaces by 2021 to assist their employees, market research firm Gartner said on Thursday.

"Digital workplace leaders will pro-actively implement AI-based technologies such as virtual assistants or other NLP-based conversational agents and robots to support and augment employees' tasks and productivity," said Helen Poitevin, Senior Research Director, Gartner.

However, past incidents have shown that poorly designed assistants cause frustration among employees that has at times prompted bad behaviour and abusive language toward the VPA.

"AI agents must be properly monitored to prevent digital harassment and frustrating user experiences otherwise it could create a toxic work environment," Poitevin added.

Recent experiments have also shown that people's abusive behaviour toward AI technologies can translate into how they treat the humans around them hence organisations should train the VPAs to respond appropriately to aggressive language, Gartner noted.

Hence, this increasing involvement of AI, VPAs and chatbots in work spaces is expected to prompt 10 per cent of organisations to add a digital harassment policy to workplace regulations.

Additionally, since applied AI and automation to routine work across banks have been successful, the research firm predicts that by 2020, about 20 per cent of operational bank staff engaged in back office activities will rely on AI to do non-routine work, the research firm noted.