Short answer
A chatbot talks — it answers questions from a script or with the help of AI. An AI agent acts — it carries out actions in your systems itself, such as creating an order, entering an invoice or booking a time slot. Often a modern website chatbot is already an agent with access to specific tools.
Comparison
| Chatbot | AI agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Main job | Answers questions | Completes tasks |
| Actions in systems | Usually none | Yes — with the tools it is allowed to use |
| Where it works | Conversation with a customer | Conversation, e-mail, background processes |
| Example | “What are your opening hours?” | “Move my appointment to Friday” — and it’s done |
The classic chatbot
Early chatbots followed pre-written scripts: if the customer writes X, reply Y. They quickly got confused by unexpected questions. Modern chatbots use language models and understand free text, but they still mostly just answer.
The AI agent
An agent doesn’t even need a conversation — for example, it can process incoming e-mails in the background. When it works on a website, the customer talks to it like a chatbot, but the agent can also act: check an order’s status, create a request, book a consultation.
Which to choose
If you only need to answer the most common questions, a chatbot is enough. If you want the work to actually get done, you need an agent. See also: how to automate customer request handling.