Imagine asking an AI agent to take over some of your daily work tasks. If you’re a marketeer, you can ask it to build lead lists, send personalized communications, and run competitor analyses, leaving you to focus on more critical work, like strategizing for a marketing campaign.

An AI agent can do all of this and more. From acting as a virtual personal assistant to performing more complex tasks like managing a refund or reconciling financial statements, AI agents can open a new world of possibilities to organizations while empowering employees and making businesses more efficient.

Gartner anticipates that by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from zero in 2024. These AI agents are expected to move beyond analysis and execute tasks autonomously to add real business value, such as discovering new revenue opportunities and making significant gains in operational efficiency, among other things.

“We’ve witnessed the rapid evolution of GenAI in an extremely tight timeframe, which has raised the stakes for companies to sharpen their AI strategies,” says Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku, a universal AI platform. “AI agents are not on their way; they are already here redefining business rules, which will only accelerate. Company leaders have no choice but to move decisively to avoid falling into the commodity AI trap, as competitors are poised to turn their AI advantage into meaningful differentiation, business transformation, and market domination.”

HOW AI AGENTS ARE EVOLVING

Since its introduction in November 2022, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. It has evolved from a simple language model into a sophisticated AI assistant, often generating text indistinguishable from humans. Like ChatGPT, AI agents are also evolving rapidly. 

Cequens, a communications service provider, is experiencing firsthand the transformation of AI agents. While it initially used AI agents to perform automated and repetitive tasks like data entry, basic analytics, and customer service, its agents can now analyze large data sets, identify patterns, and even recommend actions that people might not immediately see.

“AI agents are undergoing a remarkable evolution, transitioning from performing repetitive tasks to becoming strategic enablers of innovation and efficiency,” says Ahmed Shabrawy, co-founder and CIO of Cequens. “We’ve experienced firsthand how these agents are not just tools but partners in driving our business forward.”

It also uses AI agents to uncover market trends and provide actionable insights to guide its product development. In the future, they will move beyond supporting operational tasks to identifying new revenue streams, forecasting market shifts, and even managing risk,  adds Shabrawy. “For example, AI agents in financial services might autonomously suggest new investment opportunities based on real-time market data and trends.”

This projection is unsurprising since the AI agents market is predicted to grow significantly in the next ten years. According to Roots Analysis, the global AI agents market is projected to grow from $5.29 billion in 2024 to $216.8 billion by 2035, representing a CAGR of 40.15% during that period.

NOT WITHOUT RISKS

However, all this optimization and efficiency is not without risks. One of the main concerns with AI agents is data security. For GenAI to identify patterns, make recommendations, and reason on its own, it needs data, and data can be a risky business.

Jessica Constantinidis, Field Innovation Officer EMEA at ServiceNow, says that this is why AI is being built in pockets. 

Companies are building their LLMs to ensure data security and privacy, but now they are slowly opening up these pockets to access more data and make the most use of GenAI. “We’re building it in pockets, and people are controlling those pockets,” she says. “But those pockets will connect more and more, and this is where the ethics will come in versus the technology. 2025 is going to be a massive year on ethics versus technology.”

She believes that agentic AI needs strong governance. Although there is no AI regulation in the Middle East region, only guidelines and frameworks are needed to further fuel trust in the technology. “There is the AI pact in Europe, but no AI pact yet in the Middle East, and there is no clear AI pact yet in the US,” she adds. “But the moment you shift into agentic AI, it’s the same rule as any AI. If the data is in there, it’s in there forever.”

Constantinidis, therefore, advises companies to think carefully before putting any piece of data into AI. “The question you need to ask is: Is it public knowledge? Does it contribute to a data privacy issue? And is there a risk if we launch this data publicly?”

DISRUPTION IN AI INVESTMENTS

Despite data privacy and security concerns, investments have been pouring into GenAI. Last year, investments in the technology reached over $56 billion, almost double from 2023, according to data by S&P Global Market. Investments are also expected to increase this year, with 87% of organizations planning to increase funding into GenAI, according to findings by Informatica, an AI-powered cloud data management company.

However, according to a survey by Dataiku, 85% of company leaders are reportedly experiencing growing pressure from C-suite executives to quantify GenAI ROI.

Regardless, the appetite for AI agents is only expected to grow. Shaffra, a startup creating an AI workforce, is seeing increased interest from organizations in using AI agents, or what it calls “AI employees.’”

“There is a big appetite for many organizations to automate and become more proficient,” says Alfred Manasseh, co-founder of Shaffra. “And that’s being felt across the board, particularly across the GCC, from the UAE to Oman to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. You would never expect the level of innovation or push being driven in those countries.

Shaffra works closely with government entities and large corporations but plans to deploy its AI employees to SMEs in Q2 this year. “The people or the organizations that decide to go ahead and use AI agents will become more efficient and utilize their resources to grow rather than to stay stagnant,” he says. “Ultimately, the goal is to make your company more efficient and productive and optimize cost reduction. Who doesn’t want that?”