What is an AI agent?

An AI agent is an AI tool that works toward a goal on its own, taking steps like searching, writing or using other software, instead of answering one message at a time.

A chatbot answers what you ask. An agent takes a task, such as research a topic or fix a bug, and decides the steps itself: looking things up, running tools and checking its own work before handing back a result.

Agents are built on large language models. They're most useful for multi-step work, and the good ones show what they did so you can check it.