Fraunhofer IAO | Digital BusinessAI Agents: Concepts, Classification and Use Cases
The Fraunhofer Research and Innovation Center for Hybrid Artificial Intelligence is a joint initiative of Fraunhofer IAIS and Fraunhofer IAO. It conducts research and development on hybrid AI technologies—that is, technologies that combine machine learning, domain knowledge, and logical reasoning. Hybrid AI plays an important role, among other things, in the development of intelligent agents. This field has become increasingly important since late 2024, following the continuous enthusiasm surrounding ChatGPT and generative AI that began in November 2022.
However, this now widely discussed topic remains nebulous: the literature offers no clear answer to the question of what AI agents are and what distinguishes them. In this study, we explain why agents—not in themselves a new field in computer science—are currently regarded as one of the most important stages of development in AI.
