AGENTIC AI: HYPE VS REALITY

Agentic AI is emerging as the next big frontier in enterprise automation. While it promises massive productivity gains, growing scrutiny over hype, ROI and real-world impact are apparent

- By ROHIT CHINTAPALI

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES are ramping up deployment of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) systems that promise to automate complex business tasks and usher in a new age of productivity, but experts caution that widespread hype, vague ROI metrics and “agent washing” risk derailing enterprise adoption.

Agentic AI refers to autonomous software agents capable of pursuing complex goals with limited human oversight by combining traditional, predictive and generative AI. While hailed as a major leap in enterprise automation, a recent Gartner report has warned that the technology is being misapplied in many cases, often limited to cosmetic integrations that fail to deliver business value.

“Right now, there isn’t a mature understanding around agentic AI,” Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner tells BW Businessworld. “Everyone is just using the words or repackaging their products to cater to the hype.”

According to Verma, organisations are overly focused on user-facing interfaces like chatbots rather than transformative backend process automation. “True agentic AI should help optimise costs and boost enterprise productivity, especially for repetitive or document-heavy tasks where human input adds little value,” she says. “But we’re seeing superficial upgrades that often add costs instead of reducing them.”

Project Cancellations

Gartner projects that over 40 per cent of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to poor ROI, integration challenges and unmet expectations. The market is also being flooded by vendors engaging in “agent washing,” the rebranding of legacy chatbots and scripted automation tools as AI agents without meaningful capabilities.