Google will be sharing lots of products ready to utilize at today’s big Google I/O event.
However, one announcement from CEO Sundar Pichai was more of an idea that’s in the works: AI Agents. According to Pichai, AI Agents are still in “early days,” but their description shows what Google envisions what AI can do for users.
What are ‘AI Agents’?
Pichai described AI agents as “intelligent systems that show reasoning, planning, and memory” and can “think multiple steps ahead” to complete more compex tasks for users.
Shopping returns is a specific example used at Google I/O to give a real-world use case for AI agents. Pichai explained a scenario where a user wants to return a pair of shoes they purchased. AI agents will be able to search the user’s email inbox for the receipt, locate the order number from the email, fill out the return form on the store’s website, and schedule a pickup for the item to be returned.
Credit: Google I/O
Another scenario provided involves AI agents searching up local shops and services, like dog walkers and dry cleaners, for a user that just moved to a new city, so that the user has all of these locations and contacts at their disposal. A key feature mentioned here was that Gemini and Chrome would work together to complete these takes, showing how AI agents would be able to work across various software and platforms.
It’s an interesting concept, but also weird in some aspects. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for AI agents in the near-to-maybe-not-so-near future.