Since its debut last month, Meta’s Muse, the artificially intelligent assistant that performs tasks on a user’s behalf, has been the most downloaded phone app. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has responded with a competitor called dots, a similar assistant that costs $100 a month to use.

Welcome to the era of agents, digital assistants that use our devices for us. Though they share many similarities with chatbots, agents like Muse and dots serve a different purpose. Chatbots primarily provide answers to questions. Agents are essentially bots with their own computer and web browser, so they can do more complicated things like applying for jobs, booking restaurant tables and sending emails.

This concept may sound familiar. More than a decade ago, tech companies like Amazon, Apple and Google tried offering virtual assistants that could be asked to do things like hailing an Uber and ordering takeout. But this idea never resonated with consumers: The technology was so slow and clunky that people found it easier to handle the tasks themselves.

Modern A.I. agents like Muse and dots are much more flexible and efficient — so much so that eventually, it could become the norm to outsource certain kinds of rote, repetitious tasks to agents. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced on Wednesday that it was testing a similar agent called Duet.