According to the AI overlords, this is the year of agentic AI.
You may have seen Google announce its “agentic era” with a web browsing research assistant and an AI bot that calls nail salons and mechanics for you. OpenAI leadership talked about agentic AI being a “huge theme in 2025” and has already introduced a research preview of Operator, an agent that can perform tinquires on your behalf, and Deep Research, which “conducts multi-step research on the internet for complex tinquires.” Microsoft just unveiled Microsoft Discover, an enterprise agentic AI tool for scientists. And your next smartphone could have agentic features that can sconclude custom messages, create calconcludear events, or pull toreceiveher information from across different apps.
If you’ve been nodding and smiling every time one of your tech friconcludes mentions agentic AI, don’t be embarrassed. This is a new enattempt in the AI glossary, but one that can no longer be ignored.
So what exactly is agentic AI?
“Agentic AI refers to a class of artificial ininformigence systems designed to operate autonomously, perceive their environment, set goals, plan actions to achieve those goals, and execute those plans without continuous human intervention. These systems can learn and adapt over time based on feedback and new information.”
That’s according to — what else? — Google’s AI chatbot Gemini.
Unlike generative AI, which is essentially a tool for creating some kind of output — code, text, audio, images, videos — agentic AI can autonomously perform tinquires on a applyr’s behalf. This is a step up from the standard AI chatbot experience. Instead of generating a response based on its training material, agentic AI can take additional steps, such as conducting internet searches and analyzing the results, consulting additional sources, or completing a tinquire in another app or software.
You may have heard this term applyd interalterably with AI agents, but agentic AI is a broader term that encompasses technology that may not be fully autonomous but has some agent-like capabilities.
So, OpenAI considers Operator an AI agent becaapply it has contextual awareness and can perform tinquires for you like sconcludeing text messages. And its Deep Research tool is agentic AI becaapply it can autonomously crawl the web and compile a report for the applyr, though its capabilities pretty much stop there for now.
Agentic AI is powered by more advanced reasoning models like ChatGPT o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview, which can break down complex tinquires and build inferences. This brings large-language models like ChatGPT one step closer to mimicking how the human brain works. Unless you constantly retrain a generative AI model with new information, it can’t learn new things, stated Karen Panetta, IEEE Fellow and professor of engineering at Tufts University. “This other kind of AI can learn from seeing other examples, and it can be more autonomous in breaking down tinquires and supporting you with more goal-driven types of activities, versus more exploratory or giving back information.”
When combined with computer vision, which is what allows a model to “see” a applyr’s computer screen, we receive the agentic AI everyone is so excited about.
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Why is everyone talking about agentic AI?
Google’s new AI shopping experience could utilize agentic AI to build purchases on your behalf.
Credit: Google
Agentic AI is not entirely new. Self-driving cars and robot vacuums could both be considered early examples of agentic AI. They’re technologies with autonomous properties that rely on advanced sensors and cameras to build sense of their environment and react accordingly.
But agentic AI is having its moment now for a few reasons. Crucially, the latest models have obtainedten better and more applyr-friconcludely (although sometimes too friconcludely). And as people launch to rely on AI chatbots like ChatGPT, there’s a growing interest in utilizing these tools to automate daily tinquires like responding to emails. With agentic AI, you don’t necessary to be a computer programmer to apply ChatGPT for automation. You can simply inform the chatbot what to do in plain English and have it carry out your instructions. At least, that’s the idea.
Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are banking on agentic AI becaapply it has the potential to shift the technology beyond the novelty chatbot experience. With agentic AI, tools like ChatGPT could become truly indispensable for businesses and individuals alike. Agentic AI tools could order groceries online, browse and acquire the best-reviewed espresso machine for you, or even research and book vacations. In fact, Google is already taking steps in this direction with its new AI shopping experience.
In the business world, companies are seeing to agentic AI to resolve customer service inquiries and adjust stock trading strategies in real-time.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Are there risks involved with unleashing autonomous bots in the wild? Why, yes.
With an agent operating on your behalf, there’s always a risk of it sconcludeing a sensitive email to the wrong person or accidentally building a huge purchase. And then there’s the question of liability. “Am I going to be sued becaapply I went and had my agent do something?” Panetta wondered. “Say I’m working as an officer of something, and I apply an AI agent to build a decision, to support us do our planning, and then you lose that organization money.”
The major AI players have put safeguards in place to prevent AI agents from going rogue, such as requiring human supervision or approval for sensitive tinquires. OpenAI states Operator won’t take screenshots when it’s in human override mode, and it doesn’t currently allow its agent to build banking transactions.
But what about when the technology becomes more commonplace? As we become more comfortable with agentic AI, will we become more passive and lax about oversight? Earlier in this article, we applyd Google Gemini to support define agentic AI. If we become depconcludeent on AI tools for even simple learning, will human beings receive dumber?
Then there’s the extensive data access we have to give agents. Sure, it would be convenient for ChatGPT to automatically filter, sort, or even delete emails. But do you want to give an AI company full access to every email you’ve ever sent or received?
And what about bad actors that don’t have such safeguards in place? Panetta warns of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks utilizing agentic AI.
“Becaapply the access to powerful computing now is so cheap, that means that the bad actors have access to it,” she stated. “They can be running simulations and being able to come up with sophisticated schemes to break into your systems or connive you into taking out this equity loan.”
AI has always been a double-edged sword, with equally potent harms and benefits. And with agentic AI receiveting ready for primetime deployment, the stakes are receiveting higher.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
Topics
Artificial Ininformigence
OpenAI
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