AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challenges

This review critically distinguishes between AI Agents and Agentic AI, offering a structured, conceptual taxonomy, application mapping, and analysis of opportunities and challenges to clarify their divergent design philosophies and capabilities. We begin by outlining the search strategy and foundational definitions, characterizing AI Agents as modular systems driven and enabled by LLMs and LIMs for taskspecific automation. Generative AI is positioned as a precursor providing the foundation, with AI agents advancing through tool integration, prompt engineering, and reasoning enhancements. We then characterize Agentic AI systems, which, in contrast to AI Agents, represent a paradigm shift marked by multi-agent…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
• HA
  Hellenic Academic Libraries Link
• NI
  National Institute of Food and Agriculture

  Awards: 1029004, AWD003473, AWD004595