While we can all nod our heads, smile, and pretend to know exactly what's going on with AI at all times, in reality, we're all craving some real simple AI definitions.
In this instance, we want to touch on something that just shows how fast AI moves (and how fast we follow it). Two words: AI assistants. The world was enamored, enthusiastic, and entirely flabbergasted. Then AI agents appeared, and they kinda stole our hearts a little bit.
In this post, we're going to talk about the difference between AI assistants and AI agents, and why—if you want to outrun your competitors—it shouldn't be one or the other.
The AI Assistant: Your digital sidekick
What are AI assistants?
AI assistants are your responsive problem-solvers, but their output is only as good as your input. As they're reactive not proactive, prompts are their favorite gift.
Examples of AI assistants: Siri, ChatGPT, Alexa, Optimizely Opal (😎)
Go to AI assistants for:
- Answering questions
- Generating one-off pieces of content
- Providing immediate support
Don't rely on AI assistants for:
- Autonomous tasks: AI assistants wait for your command
- Long-term memory: AI assistants might need a regular 'memory' refresh
- Complex task execution: AI assistants require a nudge or push
The AI Agent: The strategic mastermind
What are AI agents?
AI agents are the more proactive problem-solvers, who thrive in complex tasks without the need of any human intervention. When implementing AI agents into your workflow, you save time, money, and brainpower.
Examples of AI agents: Industry Marketing Agent, Experiment Advisor Agent, Experiment Planner Agent
Go to AI agents for:
- Planning complex tasks
- Executing multi-step workflows
- Learning and adapting on-the-go
- Always getting work done (even when you're not)
The AI agent one-ups against AI assistants include:
- Continuous learning: AI agents collect, analyze, and apply insights from every interaction, continuously improving their performance without any manual updates
- Goal-oriented behavior: AI agents independently prioritize tasks and make decisions based on predefined goals and instructions, optimizing for outcomes rather than just responding to prompts
- Understanding of complex marketing challenges: AI agents can (actually) analyze market trends, customer behavior patterns, and campaign performance to develop comprehensive strategies for your brand
- Minimal human intervention: AI agents can execute on entire workflows autonomously, making adjustments whenever needed based on real-time data
How AI agents are transforming marketing organizations
Okay okay, so why are we all obsessed with AI agents... especially marketers? Well, here are a few reasons why AI agents save marketing organizations so much time and resources:
AI agents can take on:
- Predictive campaign optimization
- Automated customer journey mapping
- Real-time content personalization
- Advanced segmentation strategies
- Experiment planning and creation advisory
...and a ton of other stuff. That's a whole lot of time saved to create more amazing content. Work smarter, not harder—and all that jazz.
Optimizely Opal: Where assistants meet agents
But the thing is, there should be no assistant-agent divide. While there is a time and place for both, you should be leveraging AI in all its forms to work with you, and work hard for you and your marketing.
You want to make sure you're getting the maximum value out of both AI throughout your content lifecycle or content supply chain, and giving yourself that superhuman edge.
Optimizely Opal is your ultimate AI sidekick, with you every step of the way of that lifecycle. But at Optimizely, we're not stopping there. One by one, we are introducing AI agents to help execute those autonomous marketing workflows—set it up, and you won't even have to think about that workflow again.
Check out how Optimizely Opal builds an entire marketing campaign: AI campaign kits
You 🤝 AI: The future is collaborative
AI is not replacing marketers, it's empowering us. Embrace the assistant-to-agent revolution, and prep for the future state of marketers. "What will that be?", we hear you say. Well, marketers will be creating their own agents and agent-to-agent behaviors to make marketing even more powerful.
Keep your eyes peeled on Optimizely's vision for smarter marketing with AI; we're coming in hot.
Check out The AI Playbook: A practical guide to AI for marketers
