AI Agents Ready to Take Over in 2025 

Every year, the tech world has a new buzzword. Not long ago, it was automation, then generative AI, and now—AI agents. If you’ve been keeping up with industry trends, you’ve likely encountered discussions about AI agents frequently this year—for good reason. 

These intelligent systems represent a major evolution in how work is performed, surpassing the capabilities of traditional automation and generative AI. By handling repetitive tasks and enhancing decision-making processes, AI agents empower human workers to concentrate on more meaningful and strategic initiatives. This collaboration between humans and AI is set to elevate productivity and innovation to unprecedented levels. 

It’s no wonder tech giants are competing to develop and implement AI agents, touting them as the “next big thing” for 2025. In this article, we’ll explore the realm of AI agents—defining them, understanding their significance, and examining how they are poised to transform industries in the year ahead. 

Defining AI Agents 

AI agents are autonomous models capable of learning, executing tasks, and making choices independently without requiring constant human supervision. They integrate machine learning, natural language processing, and reasoning to automate activities, analyse data, and enhance workflows. 

Think of them as more than just a virtual assistant. From answering simple questions to handling complex, multi-step assignments, their capabilities are vast. What truly distinguishes them is their ability to be highly specialised. For instance, you could design an AI agent that’s an expert on your company’s products. This agent could then draft comprehensive responses to customer inquiries or automatically prepare product summaries for presentations, freeing you up for more strategic work. For instance, if a customer asks, “Where’s my order?” The agent can quickly check order status, track shipping, and consider delays like weather for an accurate response. 

Leading enterprise platforms, including Appian, Atlassian, Cisco Webex, Cloudera, Pega, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday, have already integrated AI agent capabilities into their workflows and user experiences. For instance, Workday’s recruiter agent assists HR teams in hiring employees, while Atlassian’s AI-driven virtual service agent automatically handles basic tech support requests. 

AI Agents: Transforming industries 

AI agents are revolutionising numerous industries by streamlining operations, enhancing decision-making, and improving customer interactions. Below are some prominent use cases across different sectors: 

Cybersecurity: AI agents in cybersecurity can autonomously identify, respond to, and mitigate security threats and fraud in almost real-time. This capability significantly shortens the response time to potential attacks, improving overall security. 

Moreover, these AI-driven systems can implement adaptive security protocols tailored to specific threats and vulnerabilities, creating a more resilient and dynamic defence strategy. 

Customer service: AI agents are much more capable than standard chatbots. They can handle various tasks, from answering questions to processing refunds and offering complex technical help. Because they can work 24/7 without human input, businesses can use AI agents to provide continuous support, making customers happier and lowering operating costs. 

Healthcare: The healthcare sector processes a large volume of sensitive patient information. AI agents designed for diagnosing medical conditions or managing patient care are typically trained on anonymized medical records and images. By analysing these datasets, they learn to recognise patterns, predict potential outcomes and risk factors, and recommend appropriate courses of action to support medical decision-making. 

Finance and Accounting: In the accounting sector, AI agents can take over time-consuming tasks such as data entry, reconciliation, and report generation. They can even perform complex financial audits, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. By automating these processes, accountants can shift their focus toward higher-value activities like financial analysis, forecasting, and strategic decision-making. 

Beyond these examples, AI agents are being explored in numerous other industries, including insurance, retail, manufacturing, and human resources. 

Tech giants in the lead 

Let’s look at some of the key players and their contributions to the AI agent revolution. 

Google: In December 2024, Google launched Mariner, an advanced AI agent built on its Gemini 2.0 framework. The research prototype operates within the Chrome browser, allowing it to navigate the web and perform various tasks. Once set up, a chat window appears on the right side of the browser, allowing users to instruct the AI to execute tasks such as creating a grocery shopping cart from a provided list. Beyond shopping, Project Mariner assists with booking flights, finding hotels, summarising articles, discovering recipes, and managing various online tasks. Currently, the extension is available only to a select group of trusted testers, but interested individuals can join the waitlist on the Project Mariner website. 

OpenAI: Although OpenAI joined the AI agent race later than its counterparts, it is making significant strides. In January 2025, the company unveiled a research preview of Operator, a multifunctional AI agent capable of navigating a web browser to handle tasks like booking travel, reserving restaurants, and shopping online. Initially, Operator will be available to U.S. users on ChatGPT’s US$200 Pro subscription plan (approx. £158) with plans to gradually expand availability to users in the Plus, Team, and Enterprise tiers. 

NVIDIA: At CES 2025, NVIDIA, a leading computer chip manufacturer, introduced its new Nemotron family of agentic AI models, which includes the Llama Nemotron large language models (LLMs) and Cosmos Nemotron vision language models (VLMs). These advancements aim to enhance agentic AI and increase productivity in businesses. The Llama Nemotron models, based on Meta’s open-source Llama foundation models, enable developers to create AI agents for various applications such as customer support, fraud detection, and supply chain optimisation. Available as hosted APIs on Hugging Face and NVIDIA’s website, these models can also be accessed through NVIDIA’s AI Enterprise software platform. 

In addition to the previously mentioned companies, major players like Microsoft and Salesforce are also competing in this arena. In 2024, Microsoft announced ten new AI agents for its Dynamics 365 suite, designed to optimise key business functions such as sales, finance, and supply chain management. These AI-powered tools are expected to enhance efficiency across various industries, with public previews set to roll out in 2025.  

Meanwhile, Salesforce is expanding its AI capabilities through its agentic AI platform, Agentforce. Unlike traditional chatbots limited to scripted responses, these advanced AI agents can reason, multitask, and make data-driven decisions, empowering businesses with greater automation and intelligence. 

Distilled 

These developments in the world of agent AI highlight a rapidly evolving landscape. As more companies enter this space, it will be fascinating to observe whether these new AI agents will become valuable collaborators, enhancing our efficiency and productivity, or if they will disrupt the workforce and lead to job displacement. The future of work could very well hinge on how we integrate these technologies into our daily operations.