The Seven Kinds of AI Agents

The term “agent” or “agentic” has become so ubiquitous in the business world that it can now seem to mean everything or nothing at all.

In its simplest form, an agent is artificial intelligence that handles multistep tasks without requiring a human to steer it the whole time. In other words, an agent goes beyond what the basic version of ChatGPT can do.

In the past year, AI firms have launched agents that appear in stand-alone apps, as sidebars or add-ons in existing apps, or as dialog boxes on webpages. As the table below shows, you’re now likely to encounter seven types of AI agents in the wild as a consumer, where they may aim to resolve your customer support complaints without requiring a human employee, or in the workplace, where they handle tasks like processing human resources forms or resolving IT tickets.