# AI agent

> Learn what an AI agent is, how it completes tasks autonomously and why your business must be machine-readable to appear in its recommendations.

Synonyms: AI assistant, autonomous agent, agentic AI

The difference from a simple chatbot: a chatbot answers questions, an AI agent pursues a goal. It breaks a task into steps, gathers the information it needs along the way and uses tools to get there — from website access to dedicated interfaces. “Where do I find…?” becomes “handle this for me”.

For businesses this means the next visitor to your website may not be a person but an agent researching on a customer's behalf. It does not admire your photography; it reads facts — availability, services, prices, ways to get in touch. Machine-readable content and controlled interfaces such as MCP decide whether your business is usable by agents or simply skipped. What is accessible remains your decision.

Concretely for South Tyrol: a guest asks their assistant to find accommodation matching certain criteria and to send an enquiry straight away. The agent recommends the businesses whose details it can retrieve and understand reliably. Becoming machine-readable today puts you in exactly those recommendations tomorrow.

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Source: https://btlabs.dev/en/glossary/ai-agent
Last-Modified: 2026-07-19T07:00:00.411Z
Languages: [de](https://btlabs.dev/llms/de/glossary/ki-agent) · [it](https://btlabs.dev/llms/it/glossary/agente-ia)
See also: [llms.txt](https://btlabs.dev/llms.txt) · [ai.txt (Policy)](https://btlabs.dev/ai.txt) · [identity.json](https://btlabs.dev/identity.json)