Announcing the replacement of article recommendations with generative replies in AI agents for messaging

Announced on | Migration and removal starts on | Migration and removal ends on
July 30, 2025 | September 8, 2025 | October 22, 2025

We’re removing article recommendations from AI agents for messaging and replacing them with generative replies instead.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What does this mean?

Why is Zendesk removing article recommendations in AI agents?

Am I affected?

What do I need to do?

What does this mean?

Starting September 8, 2025, the article recommendations feature in AI agents for messaging will be deprecated and replaced with a more powerful, generative AI-powered experience. Instead of simply recommending articles, your AI agent will automatically begin delivering accurate, human-like answers directly in the conversation, eliminating the need for customers to sift through information to find the answer they need.

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Why is Zendesk removing article recommendations in AI agents?

Article recommendations were originally introduced in AI agents as a way to leverage your help center content in messaging channels. Since then, generative AI has advanced significantly, enabling more natural, accurate, and effective responses. With the launch of our new generative replies capabilities, we’ve seen substantial improvements in customer interactions, and automation rates have reached up to four times higher on average.

We’re so confident in the power of generative replies that we’re automatically enabling them for all customers over the next month. We believe all customers using Zendesk Knowledge and AI agents should be using it.

As a result, we are also going to be retiring article recommendations. Generative replies perform far above article recommendations in terms of customer experience and automation rates.

Am I affected?

This change applies only to customers who had any drafted or published AI agents as of February 2, 2025. Your AI agent for messaging will be affected by this change if the standard response called If the AI agent finds relevant information is set to Recommend articles.

What do I need to do?

To ensure your AI agent for messaging delivers the most effective user experience, you can manually switch the “If the AI agent finds relevant information” standard response to Generate a reply. For step-by-step instructions, see Activating generative replies.

If you prefer not to use generative AI for responses, select Don’t answer based on articles before September 8, 2025. This change will not impact manually configured answer flows.

If you don’t take either of the above actions, we’ll automatically migrate your AI agent’s “If the AI agent finds relevant information” standard response to Generate a reply between September 8 and October 22, 2025.

If you have questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk customer support.