Enterprises are introducing a new category of workforce capable of analysing information, making decisions, interacting with systems and increasingly taking action on its own: AI agents. Yet we are often giving them capability before properly defining their authority. That may become one of the defining management challenges of the agentic AI era.

The first generation of enterprise generative AI largely answered questions, summarised documents and produced content. A human usually remained responsible for what happened next. Agents change that equation, writes Giedre Malinauskaite, Chief Strategy Officer at CNTXT. An agent can access a customer record, query inventory, initiate a workflow, recommend a supplier or execute a transaction.