Everyone is Obsessed with Generative AI, But Missing the Real Gem, Agentic AI
While everyone is buzzing about generative AI tools, most people are overlooking the true game-changer in the AI world: agentic AI. Here's what you need to know about both, and why agentic AI might be the future you're not paying attention to.
What is Generative AI?
When the AI world exploded, generative AI was the easiest risk to take. It responds to our inputs (prompts) by generating images in wild Ghibli styles, creating videos, writing content, doing research, working as writing assistants, and much more.
Everyone became obsessed with the amount of time they could save just by using AI. Need a blog post? Ask ChatGPT. Want an image? Fire up Genspark. Need code? GitHub Copilot has you covered.
Everyone is using Generative AI daily, whether you prefer Claude, Chatgpt or Perplexity AI or another tool. there were a reason of such interest, generative AI tools generally gives you:
Immediate, visible results
Low barrier to entry
Clear value proposition
Minimal integration required
Safe to experiment with
What is Agentic AI?
Meanwhile, AI engineers and researchers were introducing another form called Agentic AI, which works on creating autonomous agents that handle complete workflows from A to Z. Think customer care that resolves tickets independently, management assistance that schedules and coordinates projects, or booking systems that handle everything from search to confirmation.
Key Differences:
Generative AI: Creates content based on prompts
Agentic AI: Takes autonomous actions to complete entire workflows
What Makes Agentic AI Complex (for most of people)?
Requires API integrations with multiple systems
Uses multiple LLMs working together
Needs subscriptions to various tools and platforms
Requires sophisticated error handling and decision-making
Must maintain context across long, multi-step processes
Tools Leading the Agentic AI Revolution
LangChain/LangGraph: Frameworks for building agentic workflows
AutoGPT: One of the early agentic AI examples
Claude Code (Anthropic): Agentic coding assistant
GPT-4 with function calling: Enables agentic behavior
CrewAI: Multi-agent systems
Microsoft Copilot Studio: For building AI agents
Impact:
The impact driven from the usage of agents AI on different business is huge and noticeable like:
Major financial institutions now are exploring Agentic AI for automated trading, risk assessment, and fraud detection workflows that can operate independently across multiple systems.
Telecoms like Vodafone are piloting end-to-end customer service agents that can troubleshoot technical issues, escalate when needed, and resolve problems autonomously without human intervention.
HR departments testing recruitment agents that manage the entire hiring pipeline, IT teams deploying incident management agents that detect, diagnose, and fix issues and marketing teams using campaign agents that research, create, launch, and optimize campaigns
Why Agentic AI is the Real Game-Changer
While generative AI makes us more productive, agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally transform how work gets done:
Complete Automation: Instead of helping humans work faster, it can handle entire processes independently
24/7 Operations: Agents can work continuously without breaks or downtime
Scalable Intelligence: Can handle multiple complex workflows simultaneously
Adaptive Problem-Solving: Can navigate unexpected situations and make decisions
Generative AI was just the opening act. As organizations become more comfortable with AI integration and develop the infrastructure to support autonomous systems, agentic AI represents the next evolutionary leap.
The question isn't whether agentic AI will reshape industries, it's whether you'll be ready when it does.
While everyone else is still focused on generating better content, the smartest organizations are already building the agents that will run tomorrow's workflows. The real AI revolution isn't about what AI can create, it's about what AI can do.
Think of yourself as an entrepreneur building your own startup now, do u think you need to hire the amount of resources any entrepreneur needed 5 years ago? or by building one agent you could save yourself and your team a lot of time and effort?