By Tech Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
An AI agent is an autonomous system that uses AI to perform tasks on behalf of a user. Agents are often able to plan and reason through workflows, and interact with outside tools.
The concept is not new—the term “agent” has been in use for decades in the software field. But the rise of large language models (LLMs), and especially newer models that can perform reasoning, has upped their complexity and sophistication. Agents on offer from Big Tech companies now promise to automate office tasks like planning marketing campaigns, generating leads, and managing supply chains, among many others. On the consumer side, AI companies are exploring how agents might help you shop or book travel.
You may have seen Matthew McConaughey drawling about AI agents during Super Bowl commercial breaks in 2025. Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Salesforce have adopted the agent terminology as a way to frame the next stage of generative AI in their marketing. The hype has made “agents” into a bit of a buzzword, which has in turn led to some definitional imprecision.
Orchestrated
But on a technical level, there are a handful of different categories of agents sorted by how they go about their tasks and interact with their environment. A simple reflex agent reacts to a perception of its environment with a preset response. Model-based reflex agents are similar, but adjust based on their model of an environment. Goal-based agents strive for an objective within a modeled environment, and utility-based agents aim to maximize a certain value or utility.
These systems can also be leveled up into multi-agent networks, in which task-specific agents are discrete nodes that interact with one another under the guidance of some sort of orchestration scheme.
