The Rise of AI Agents
AI is evolving from assistants that answer questions to agents that take action. Understand what this means for brand discovery.
Key Takeaways
- The difference between AI assistants and AI agents
- Current state of agentic AI deployment
- How agents discover and evaluate brands differently
- Timeline and adoption projections
Beyond Question-Answering
When you ask ChatGPT a question, it synthesizes information and responds. But AI agents go further—they can browse the web, fill out forms, compare options, and even make purchases on your behalf. This shift from answering to acting represents the next major evolution in AI-powered discovery.
OpenAI's Operator, Anthropic's computer use capabilities, and Google's agentic features are early examples of this trend. Users will increasingly delegate tasks: "Book me a restaurant for Friday night," "Find and compare three project management tools," "Research and recommend a new laptop under $1000."
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 15% of daily decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents. Your brand needs to be discoverable by systems that browse, not just chat.
How Agents Discover Differently
Agent behavior vs. assistant behavior:
- •Agents visit websites: They don't just know about your brand—they browse your actual site, read your content, navigate your pages.
- •Agents compare actively: Instead of synthesizing training data, agents can visit competitor sites and compare in real-time.
- •Agents evaluate dynamically: Pricing, availability, reviews—agents check current state, not learned information.
- •Agents take action: Form fills, sign-ups, purchases—agents complete transactions, not just recommend them.
The Discovery Shift
For traditional SEO, you optimize for search engine crawlers. For GEO with assistants, you optimize for training data and knowledge retrieval. For AI agents, you optimize for real-time browsing and automated evaluation. Each requires different but overlapping strategies.