AI Agent
An AI agent is an autonomous software entity that perceives its environment, makes decisions, and takes actions to achieve specific goals without continuous human intervention.
In Depth
AI agents represent the next evolution beyond simple chatbots. While chatbots follow predefined scripts, AI agents can reason about context, access external tools and databases, and execute multi-step workflows autonomously. In customer support, AI agents can read a ticket, look up customer history, check order status in a CRM, and compose a personalized response — all without human involvement.
Modern AI agents use large language models (LLMs) as their reasoning engine, combined with tool-use capabilities that let them interact with APIs, databases, and business systems. The key differentiator is autonomy: an AI agent decides what action to take next based on the current situation, rather than following a rigid decision tree.
Related Terms
Multi-Agent Orchestration
Multi-agent orchestration is the coordination of multiple specialized AI agents working together to handle complex tasks, where each agent focuses on a specific domain or function.
Chatbot vs AI Agent
Chatbots follow predefined scripts and decision trees to respond to user inputs, while AI agents use reasoning capabilities to autonomously understand context, make decisions, and execute actions.
Conversational AI
Conversational AI refers to technologies that enable computers to engage in natural, human-like dialogue, understanding context, maintaining conversation history, and generating relevant responses.
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