The term of art in 2026. No agreed definition.
“Agentic AI” is the term of art in 2026. The loose definition: a language model wired up with tools that takes multi-step actions toward a goal, rather than answering one prompt and stopping. Instead of “summarize this email,” it is “read the inbox, draft replies, schedule the meetings.” In practice the label gets stuck onto anything that calls a function once. There is no agreed threshold for how autonomous, how many steps, or how much tool use qualifies.