What is an AI Agent?

AI agents are still a mystery to most. Millions of people already use one of the popular chatbots—ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude (from Anthropic), Copilot (from Microsoft), or Grok (from X, formerly Twitter). However, most of those users know little about AI agents.

That’s understandable. AI chatbots and AI agents are not the same, and they do different things.

An AI agent is not a glorified chatbot.

In our recent article “What Is a Chatbot?,” we defined a chatbot this way:

• A chatbot is a helpful, tireless digital assistant built into a computer. It is programmed to read your questions and instantly provide sensible answers by searching through vast amounts of information.

When you need an answer to a question or information on just about any topic imaginable, a chatbot gives you answers to your questions quickly, intelligently, and (mostly) accurately. But what if you wanted it to do more for you than just be a know-it-all?

Well, the developers of AI were thinking the same thing, which is why AI agents were created. 

Agents do things for people.

We probably hear the word “agent” more than we use it, but we’re all familiar with the term and may hear it more than we realize. For instance…

• A sports agent negotiates contracts for client athletes and advises them on their careers.
• An entertainment agent promotes an actor for starring roles and negotiates a salary for a single movie or a program.
• A real estate agent helps a client find the house that suits their family, lifestyle, budget, and personal likes and dislikes.

Agents do things for people; they don’t simply pass along information. In other words,…

• The sports agent doesn’t just provide a list of baseball teams and the general manager’s name.
• The movie agents do more than just send a bio and a headshot to studio heads.
• The real estate agent does more than provide a client with a list of homes at a certain price range and say, “good luck to you.”

In fact, a good agent will often go a step further. They will often anticipate what their clients might want or need and proactively act on their clients’ behalf to achieve an ideal outcome. (Of course, it’s in their best interest to do so!)

An AI agent steps in where AI or a chatbot leaves off. An AI agent can accomplish complex tasks for you personally and handle all aspects of most assignments you give it.

It’s like having access to all the information from AI, and a team of specialists across different areas who can use it to get things done.

When you need more than answers, an AI agent is the answer.

If a chatbot is an “answer man,” an AI agent is an “action man.” It gets things done and takes what a chatbot can do to the next level. An AI agent can harness an AI’s knowledge and intelligence and translate selected information and data into actionable steps for you. Today’s AI agents are capable of…

• Answering your specific questions.
• Automating your tasks.
• Completing your to-do lists.

One YouTube personality described AI’s wealth of information as “raw brainpower.” It has “the smarts” to deliver it to you instantly. But its help pretty much ends there. An AI agent, however, is a new technological innovation and tool; it leverages AI’s brainpower to get things done for you.

• It’s one thing, for example, to know which cities you might visit when you go to Europe on vacation and what transportation and hotels are available. That’s what an AI chatbot can tell you.
• It’s a whole other thing—and an incredible step in AI—to have an AI agent pick your hotels, within your budget, help you decide how to travel around, and even help you book flights and hotel stays.

How does an AI do what you want?

But… if AI agents are, after all, advanced applications (brilliant software) rather than actual geniuses or tireless human workers, how do they do what they do? According to people who understand these things, AI agents have the capability to

• understand
• think
• act

This isn’t a “natural development” or the magical evolution of Artificial Intelligence itself. AI agents were created and designed by people, specifically developers. Here are answers to some common questions you might have about AI agents:

1. Are AI Agents for everyone?
   There are agents that manage your calendar and schedule, create to-do lists, and even summarize the emails you receive and draft replies. An AI agent could alert you to conflicts in your schedule—those it sees or predicts—and adjust your routine. Based on your interactions with it and your input, it “gets to know you.”
   
2. How tech-savvy do I need to be to use an AI agent?
   It helps to have a good grasp of computers and technology, and if you do, you could find AI agents that come alongside you to make your life simpler, more organized, and more efficient. However, as you might expect, AI agents and information about them can get heavy with tech jargon and assume that you’re more tech-savvy about AI than you are.
   
3. AI chatbots have well-known names, like ChatGPT and Claude; is it the same for AI agents?
   No, they’re not. They’re not identified or named the way software programs or apps are. Instead, AI agents are part of an established software family or platform (“enterprise software” or a software “ecosystem”) that hosts and provides them. Examples include Salesforce Agentforce, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Google Cloud Vertex AI. They’re referred to by the tasks they perform—billing agent, research agent, for example. 
   
4. Is there a list of AI agents to search?
   If you want to see what categories of agents are available, visit this AI agent’s directory. 

How to start exploring what an AI can do for you.

With a little exploration, you’ll see that much of the information about AI agents isn’t written for beginners. It is aimed more at those who work in or produce content for the AI universe. Still, just as chatbots have been widely adopted by millions of “ordinary” people—and that was the intention—AI agents will get their day soon. 

To prepare to use an AI agent, first get comfortable and somewhat proficient with a chatbot, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot. Then research AI agents further and decide whether to explore them.

Google AI suggests starting with GPT Operator, which it calls a beginner-friendly AI agent that requires no technical setup. 

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