AI agents are independent systems that can activate on their own based on any event such as the time of day or specific data that it sees. Agents can deal with anything connected to the Internet; for example, they can book a flight or hotel reservation. Chatbots, on the other hand, answer the user's question, but both agents and chatbots are given requests by the user, known as the "prompt." However, in contrast to chatbots that answer immediate questions, agents are often given instructions to execute tasks in the future.
The chatbot may also be able to access external databases and resources if required and it therefore may perform functions similar to an agent but only in response to the prompt (see
RAG). See
AI agent and
chatbot.