Glossary
Agent washing
What is agent washing?
Agent washing is selling an existing product, such as a chatbot, an AI assistant or robotic process automation, as an AI agent when it lacks real agentic capabilities.
Why it matters
It makes buying harder, because a product sold as an agent may not plan or act on its own at all. Testing it on your own cases, rather than on the vendor’s demo, separates real capability from relabeling.
Example
A vendor relabels its scripted support bot as an “AI agent.” On 200 of the buyer’s past tickets, it resolves only the ones its scripts already covered.