What is an AI agent, and what can it do for a business

AI agent, chatbot and ChatGPT

A chatbot answers questions in a chat window. ChatGPT, used on its own, is a general assistant that knows nothing about your company. An AI agent built for a business answers from its documents, has controlled access to its applications and can act: create a record, send an email, update an order.

What an AI agent is made of

An AI agent has five parts, and its quality depends on all of them, not only on the model.

• The language model, which understands the request and words the answer.
• The sources: the company's documents and data.
• The tools: the applications it may work in, through their APIs.
• The rules: what it may do, what it may not, and when it hands over to a person.
• The log: every action recorded, so it can be checked.

Which tasks it can take on in a business

• Replying to customers' emails and messages from the company's documents.
• Finding information in contracts, procedures and offers.
• Extracting data from invoices, orders and forms.
• Sorting requests and passing them to the right person.
• Drafting replies and documents for a person to approve.

Which rules it needs

A good AI agent has access only to what it needs, answers only from agreed sources, says when it does not know and hands the case to a person. Every action it takes is recorded. Without those rules, an AI agent is a risk, not a help.

How to start

With a single, well-defined task that takes time and follows clear rules. The agent is tested on real cases from the business, then extended to new tasks as the results show.