Agentic AI describes systems that pursue a goal across multiple steps, choosing their own actions and using tools along the way, rather than answering a single prompt. The governance question changes with it: instead of reviewing one output, you are deciding in advance which actions an agent may take unsupervised and where a human must approve.
Why it matters for a UK business
It is the difference between a tool that answers when asked and one that acts on its own initiative. That is genuinely useful for work that varies each time, and genuinely risky for work where a wrong step is expensive and nobody was watching.
What it looks like in practice
An agent is given a goal and a set of tools, and works out the steps itself. It might read the inbox, draft replies, update the CRM and book the follow-up without being told each step. The value is in the autonomy. So is the risk.
What to do about it
Draw the boundary before building anything: what it may do unattended, what needs a person before it proceeds, what it must never touch. The boundary is the design decision. The rest is configuration.
Related terms
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If this is the term that has come up in your business and you want it worked through against your own situation rather than in the abstract, that is a conversation, not a page.
Speak to ChrisWritten by Chris Duffy. Last reviewed .