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ARTICLE · 18 AUGUST 2026

Agentic AI: What It Is And Why It Matters

Frank Kelley examines how this next generation of artificial intelligence differs from traditional generative AI and why its growing autonomy presents new opportunities—and new legal considerations—for businesses.

United StatesTechnology

Artificial intelligence has reached another significant stage in its development. Over the last several years, businesses have become increasingly familiar with generative AI tools that can draft text, summarize documents, generate code, and respond to user questions. These tools have proven useful across many industries, but they remain largely reactive. A user provides an instruction or input, and the system produces a corresponding output.

Agentic AI represents a further evolution. It refers to AI systems that can pursue a defined goal, plan the steps needed to achieve that goal, and take action with some degree of autonomy. Rather than merely responding to a prompt, an agentic AI system may determine what information it needs, use available software tools, adjust its approach based on results, and continue working toward completion of the assigned objective.

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