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In artificial intelligence, 2025 marked a decisive shift. Systems once confined to research labs and prototypes began to appear as everyday tools. At the center of this transition was the rise of AI agents \u2013 AI systems that can use other software tools and act on their own.<\/p>\n
While researchers have studied AI for more than 60 years, and the term \u201cagent\u201d has long been part of the field\u2019s vocabulary, 2025 was the year the concept became concrete for developers and consumers alike.<\/p>\n
AI agents moved from theory to infrastructure, reshaping how people interact with large language models, the systems that power chatbots like ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the definition of AI agent shifted from the\u00a0academic framing<\/a>\u00a0of systems that perceive, reason and act to AI company\u00a0Anthropic\u2019s description<\/a>\u00a0of large language models that are capable of using software tools and taking autonomous action. While large language models have long excelled at text-based responses, the recent change is their expanding capacity to act, using tools, calling\u00a0APIs<\/a>, coordinating with other systems and completing tasks independently.<\/p>\n This shift did not happen overnight. A key inflection point came in late 2024, when Anthropic released the\u00a0Model Context Protocol<\/a>. The protocol allowed developers to connect large language models to external tools in a standardized way, effectively giving models the ability to act beyond generating text. With that, the stage was set for 2025 to become the year of AI agents.<\/p>\n