Level : Beginner
AI agents: 15 real-world examples of how to use them
By The Info Agent IA editorial team ·
In practice, an AI agent is a tool you give a goal to, such as booking a table, preparing a presentation or fixing a bug, and which works through the steps on its own to get there. Here are 15 real examples, each tied to a tool that exists as of 22 October 2026, with what to watch for in every case.
What makes a tool an agent
An AI agent does not just answer: it acts. It opens pages, clicks, fills in fields, creates files or sends messages, deciding the order of operations itself. If the line between an agent and a chatbot feels blurry, our article on the difference between an AI agent, a chatbot and an assistant clears it up, and our complete guide to AI agents covers the basics.
Today, agents come in three forms. First, consumer assistants that are gaining the ability to act, such as a smart speaker or a browser. Next, work tools with a built-in agent, in a note-taking app or an automation platform. Finally, specialised agents that technical teams build for a specific job, from code to scientific research.
The examples below follow that order, from the simplest to the most technical. The table sums them up.
| No. | Example | Tool mentioned | For whom |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Book a restaurant, order a meal | Alexa+ | Consumers |
| 2 | Act inside phone apps | Siri with Apple Intelligence | Apple users |
| 3 | Manage reminders and lists | Pi | Consumers |
| 4 | Compare offers online | Comet, Opera Neon | Consumers |
| 5 | Plan a trip or a big purchase | Perplexity, Kimi | Everyone |
| 6 | Get automatic monitoring | Kimi, MiniMax Agent | Everyone |
| 7 | Shop online | Meta’s Muse | Consumers in the US |
| 8 | Create a presentation | Genspark | Freelancers, employees |
| 9 | Produce a report or a small website | Manus | Freelancers, small firms |
| 10 | Keep a workspace up to date | Notion AI | Teams |
| 11 | Follow up on leads | Zapier Agents, n8n, Make | Small firms |
| 12 | Answer internal questions | Copilot Studio | Companies |
| 13 | Write and fix code | GitHub Copilot, goose | Developers |
| 14 | Fix security flaws at scale | Coding agents | Security teams |
| 15 | Analyse scientific data | Research agents | Laboratories |
In everyday life
1. Book a table or order a meal
You tell your speaker “book a table for four on Saturday night near me”, and the assistant handles the rest. That is the promise of Alexa+, the new version of Amazon’s voice assistant, which can book a restaurant or a ride, or order a meal, by relying on partners such as OpenTable in the UK. It is available in the US and Canada, and in free early access in the UK.
Watch out: partners vary from country to country, and a misunderstood request can lead to an unwanted booking. Always read the confirmation.
2. Let your phone act for you
Sending a relative the photo you took last night, finding an address in a message and starting the route: this is the kind of task Siri, with Apple Intelligence, is learning to do directly inside apps.
Watch out: Siri AI is in beta in iOS 27, and in the European Union it is at first available only on Mac and Apple Vision Pro, not on iPhone.
3. Manage reminders and lists
A conversational assistant such as Pi, from Inflection AI, got an update in July 2026 that adds reminders and to-do lists. The idea: you talk about your week, and it pulls out the things you must not forget.
Watch out: this is a very light form of agent. For important appointments, keep a calendar you control.
4. Compare offers and fill in a form
AI browsers include an agent that goes through pages for you: comparing three mobile plans, noting the price of the same product on several sites, pre-filling a form. Comet, Perplexity’s browser, and Opera Neon, with its Neon Do feature that shows its steps and can be paused, are two examples. Our guide to AI browser agents compares them in detail.
Watch out: these features are paid (Comet’s agent is not in the free plan, and Neon Do requires the Standard plan at $19.90 a month), and an agent that reads unknown pages can be tricked by a hidden instruction.
5. Plan a trip or a big purchase
Before buying an e-bike or spending a week in Lisbon, an in-depth research agent reads dozens of pages and gives you a sourced summary. Perplexity and the Deep Research mode in Kimi work this way.
Watch out: Perplexity’s free plan only gives one Research query a month. Open the cited sources before deciding.
6. Get monitoring without thinking about it
Scheduling an agent to send you new property listings in a neighbourhood or a competitor’s news every Monday: that is the idea behind scheduled tasks. Kimi offers two in its free plan, and MiniMax Agent includes them too.
Watch out: the Classic version of MiniMax Agent is being retired on 20 November 2026 in favour of MiniMax Code. Check that a scheduled task is still running before relying on it.
7. Shop online
In September 2026, Meta launched Muse, a personal agent separate from Meta AI, able to act for you on shopping sites. For now, it is only available in the United States.
Watch out: some merchants refuse agents. We cover this tug-of-war in our article on the limitations of AI agents. Keep payment approval for yourself.
At work
8. Turn an idea into a presentation
You give a topic and a few notes, and the agent looks up information, writes and lays out the slides. Genspark has made this one of its flagship uses, alongside spreadsheets, documents and meeting notes.
Watch out: the free plan runs on daily credits. Check every figure in the presentation, since the agent may invent some.
9. Produce a report or a small website
Manus works in an isolated environment with its own browser and the ability to run code. You can ask it for a market report, a showcase website or a slide deck, and follow its steps. The free plan gives 300 credits a day.
Watch out: a long task burns through credits fast, and the more steps it involves, the higher the risk of error.
10. Keep the team workspace up to date
With Notion Agent, Notion AI can create pages, update a project database or write up minutes from a meeting. Custom agents can even run on their own, on a trigger or a schedule: an agentic workflow, in short.
Watch out: full access is reserved for the Business plan. Check what the agent changes, especially in a shared database.
11. Follow up on leads without retyping
A new contact fills in the form on your site: the agent looks up their company, updates the CRM record and drafts a follow-up message. This is a typical no-code use of Zapier Agents. Tools such as n8n or Make allow similar scenarios, halfway between classic automation and an agent.
Watch out: Zapier is now steering users towards “AI by Zapier”. Keep a human review before anything goes out to a client.
12. Answer employees’ internal questions
“How many days of leave do I have left?”, “How do I reset my VPN access?”: Microsoft’s Copilot Studio is used to build internal agents for HR, IT or support, connected to company documents.
Watch out: an internal agent is only as reliable as its sources. Always provide a route to a human.
13. Write and fix code
This is where agents are most advanced. GitHub Copilot can take on a development task, and goose is an open-source agent that works locally on your machine. This is known as agentic coding. On the OpenAI side, the ChatGPT Plus subscription includes Codex, its coding agent.
Watch out: a fix that works can break something else. Tests and review remain essential.
In research and security
14. Fix security flaws at scale
In the Patch the Planet programme, run with OpenAI, engineers rely on coding agents to propose fixes to open-source projects.
Watch out: however effective, the agent still needs expert review.
15. Analyse scientific data
The last example is the most striking: thousands of agents working in parallel on the same problem, a form of multi-agent system.
Watch out: these results are leads to be confirmed in the lab, not established discoveries.
The tools at a glance
Here are the main assistants mentioned above, with their status and plans:
| Assistant | Free | Paid from | Web search | Agent mode | Voice | Images |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexa+ | Limited | $19.99/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | — |
| Comet | Limited | $17/mo | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Opera Neon | Limited | $19.9/mo | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
| Kimi | Limited | $19/mo | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Genspark | Limited | $24.99/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Manus | Limited | $20/mo | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Notion AI | Limited | $10/mo | Yes | Yes | — | — |
Check yourself Of these three tasks, which would you hand to an agent first: paying a bill, preparing a comparison of mobile plans, replying to an unhappy customer?
The mobile plan comparison. It is easy to check, and a mistake costs nothing as long as you do not sign up. Paying a bill or replying to a customer puts your money or your reputation on the line: keep them, or approve each action yourself.
How to choose your first use
Start with a task that comes up often, takes you time and whose result can be checked at a glance. Let the agent do the research and preparation, and keep the decision for yourself: that is the human in the loop principle. To find the right tool, see our pick of the best AI agents or, on a zero budget, our guide to free AI agents. If you want to build your own agent, the framework comparison will point you in the right direction.
Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest AI agent example to start with?
Scheduled monitoring or in-depth research: the agent searches, compares and hands you a summary, without buying or sending anything on your behalf. If the result is poor, you lose a few minutes, not money.
Do you have to pay to use an AI agent?
Not always. Several tools offer a free plan limited in credits or tasks, but the features that really act, such as browsing and filling in forms, are often reserved for subscriptions. Check the tool's pricing page before you start.
Can an AI agent buy something for me?
Some can, through partners or by browsing a shopping site. That is exactly the kind of task where you should keep human approval before payment, because the agent can pick the wrong product, quantity or date.
What is the difference between an AI agent and traditional automation?
Traditional automation follows steps set in advance. An agent receives a goal in plain language and chooses the actions itself. It is more flexible but also less predictable, which is why you should check what it does.