Agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that exhibit agency — meaning they can autonomously perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific goals without requiring constant human instruction. For example, agentic AI can do things like provide customer support, shop for you, write code, debug programs, detect security threats, analyze data, and even drive cars or operate machinery. In the past, you've seen be report on Perplexity and OpenAI launching AI powered shopping agents, which are both examples of agentic AI tools.
To make sure they're not left behind on agentic AI developments, Amazon formed a new group focused on the technology, with the mission of helping customers automate more of their lives, according to an e-mail viewed by Reuters. The new agentic AI group will be led by AWS executive Swami Sivasubramanian, who previously served as VP of AI and data.
AWS CEO Matt Garman wrote:
“Agentic AI has the potential to be the next multi-billion business for AWS. We have the opportunity to help our customers innovate even faster and unlock more possibilities, and I firmly believe that AI agents are core to this next wave of innovation.”
Some of these possibilities, Amazon briefly gave a sneak peak into last week when discussing future plans for Alexa+. Business Insider also reports that Amazon is working on a new reasoning AI model that aims to offer hybrid reasoning, a mix of quick answers, and more complex thinking — which will inevitably play a role in any of its agentic AI ambitions.
Meta also views agentic AI as the future:
In an interview with CNBC, Meta's head of business AI, Clara Shih, that she expects agentic AI to transform every job and every business with new levels of reasoning and action capabilities.
“We’re quickly coming to a place where every business, from the very large to the very small, they’re going to have a business agent representing it and acting on its behalf, in its voice — the way that businesses today have websites and email addresses. If you’re a small business — you own a coffee shop, you own a jewelry shop online, you’re distributing through Instagram — you don’t have the resources to hire a big AI team, and so now our dream is that they won’t have to.”
For consumers, Shih says that AI assistant will do all kinds of things like researching products, planning trips, and even planning social outings with friends.
Shih says every person must prepare now for the changes that will be coming:
“There isn’t a single job that hasn’t been completely transformed by the internet and by mobile and by social media. I think we’re at the same juncture now with AI, where it’s clear that there are certain professions where AI will significantly change the job. But my prediction is that over time, AI will change every job function across every industry.”
Last but not least, Salesforce doesn't want to be forgotten in the agentic AI race:
Salesforce launched AgentExchange, a marketplace that allows enterprise customers to expand the capabilities of Agentforce AI agents using pre-built “workers” that use business rules and automation to perform tasks independently.
AgentExchange will house skills and capabilities for AI agents and act as a marketplace for what the company calls “digital labor.”