Recently artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots (ICA hereinafter) have been widely introduced in online customer service as a new type of “digital employee” (Suthar 2020). It is projected that by 2025, 95% of consumer online service interactions will be chatbot-powered (Clark 2020). Consequently, the negative impacts of ICA on existing employees are raising an increasing concern (Wang and Siau 2019). While no mass job destruction is currently on the map, the reshaping of the nature of jobs is underway (Davenport & Westman 2021). Employees are facing psychosocial challenges in dealing with digital workforce changes, which can constrain technology investments (Marsh et al. 2022). Understanding employees’ concern and their responses is critical, yet has not been well developed. To address this gap, our paper integrates Job identity theory and cooperation/competition theory to investigate the effect of the introduction of ICA in the workplace on employees’ job perceptions and reactions. Specifically, our objectives are: (1) To identify the employee perception of ICA’s human-like intelligent capabilities (i.e., autonomy, learning capability, and natural language dialogue capability); and (2) To develop a Job Identity Threat (JIT) (shown in Figure 1) that examines the impact of ICA capabilities on employees’ work experience (i.e., loss of control, loss of employability, and loss of status) and then on their perceived job identity threat and coping intention. 3) To empirically validate the model through a survey of frontline employees who have experience working with ICA. Data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling.