A new class of software is learning to think and act on its own. These “AI agents” promise to reshape how work gets done. Now, OpenAI’s Custom GPTs let anyone build a specialized AI assistant. But are these powerful tools true autonomous agents, or simply a clever echo of the real thing? The answer lies in what it means to be independent.
What Is an Agent?
This is Bratislava—where the past and future press close. Here, in the heart of an old continent, a new kind of intelligence is taking shape. It is not human. It does not sleep. It is called an AI agent.
An AI agent is a piece of software that sees its world, makes a choice, and then acts. It does this on its own, with a goal in mind and without a person guiding every step. Think of it as a worker with four distinct parts. It has senses to perceive its environment, gathering data through sensors or digital streams. It has a brain to reason and plan, turning information into a sequence of steps. It has memory, both short-term for the task at hand and long-term for lessons learned. And it has hands, or “actuators,” to carry out its decisions—sending an email, calling up information, or changing a database. Autonomy is its defining trait.
The Custom-Built Assistant
Into this world comes a new tool: the Custom GPT. OpenAI, a company in San Francisco, allows anyone to build a tailored version of its ChatGPT. You give it specific instructions. You feed it documents, creating a specialized knowledge base. You can even connect it to the outside world with tools and external data through APIs. No coding is required. A business can create a GPT to answer customer questions from its own manuals. A teacher can build one loaded with textbooks to tutor students.
So, is this Custom GPT a true AI agent? The answer is nuanced. It has some of the parts. The underlying language model provides a powerful reasoning engine. When a user types a prompt, the GPT “perceives” a request. With custom actions, it can “act” on external systems. In this way, it can function as a goal-based agent for a specific, temporary task. If you ask it to find flights and then suggest a packing list, it can plan and execute that sequence.
But the core of true agency is missing. A Custom GPT is not truly autonomous. It is reactive. It waits for a human prompt and then its work stops. It cannot start a task on its own. Its memory is fleeting, unable to learn from interactions across different conversations. It lives inside the walls of ChatGPT, a brilliant specialist confined to its workshop.
Custom GPTs are a significant step. They put the power to configure agent-like tools into many hands. They perform tasks with sharp intelligence. But they are not the independent workers roaming the digital landscape. They are sophisticated instruments that wait for a human conductor to give the signal. The performance is impressive, but the autonomy is not yet there.