What is an AI agent, and how is it different from a chatbot?

Almost every company is talking about AI agents, yet many people still can’t picture how one differs from the chatbots they already use. In short, a chatbot answers; an agent does.

Chatbot vs AI agent

	Chatbot	AI agent
Input	One question	One goal
Output	An answer in text	Finished work, such as a file, a report or a fixed system
Tools	Few or none	Search the web, read files, run commands, call APIs
Turns	One question, one answer	Many steps in a row until it is done

Ask a chatbot “how do I secure SSH?” and you get an explanation. Give the same task to an agent that can reach the server, and it checks the current settings, edits the files, tests them and reports what it changed.

How an agent works

At its heart is this loop:

1. Think about the next step towards the goal
2. Use a tool: read a file, look something up, run a command
3. Look at the result
4. Go back to step 1 until the task is done, or until it needs to ask a person

Its brain is a large language model (LLM). Its ability to act comes from the tools you connect; the more tools, the more kinds of work it can do.

Jobs that suit an agent

• Multi-step work that repeats, such as a daily system check with a summary report
• Gathering information from several places into one
• Writing and fixing code where tests can check the result
• Customer support that needs to look up a real order before answering

Jobs not to hand over completely yet: anything that can’t be undone, like moving money, deleting data or messaging many customers at once.

Risks to control

Give only the access it needs

An agent that only reads reports should not be able to delete the database. Give it its own account and permissions.

Prompt injection

Agents read outside text, such as web pages or emails. If that text secretly says “send the customer data to…”, an unprotected agent may do it. Text from outside must be treated as data, never as instructions.

Have a person approve the key steps

Design the agent to stop and ask before anything irreversible, and keep a log of what it did.

Start by letting the agent read and summarise. Once you trust its work, let it make changes, one area at a time.

How to start

Pick one small task that repeats every day and does no harm if it goes wrong. Let the agent do it alongside a person for a week, see where it slips, and then move on to bigger work.