Agentic AI for Content Creators

What You Need to Know

I've been hearing the term “agentic AI” on repeat recently, so I dove into what it is and why it's important to content creators.  

Agentic AI refers to AI that can take action independently to complete a goal, not just respond passively to prompts. In other words, it's a little worker bee heading out of the hive with specific instructions from the queen (that's me) and returning once its task is done. 

In my conversations with ChatGPT, I received a beautiful picture of how AI agents could automate a lot of repetitive tasks for me. For instance, as part of my current tasks, I'm transcribing videos, uploading those transcriptions to ChatGPT, and then asking Chat to create rough drafts of video summaries based on very specific style guidelines. It's pretty time intensive -- and repetitive. I have to:

1. Pull up the video and let Otter.ai transcribe while the video runs in real time (I know there's the ability to upload video and audio files directly to Otter, but I don't have the files);

2. Download the transcription to my desktop as a PDF;

3. Upload the PDF into a conversation with ChatGPT, reminding it of the parameters and style guides of the summaries I'm looking for;

4. Copy the results into a Google doc in my drive.

Wouldn't it be cool if an AI agent could perform these tasks automatically, and then let me know when there was a new summary for me to review?

Enter Agentic AI! That’s the promise — to complete a series of tasks automatically with minimal instruction from me. At its most robust, it can act on its own: reasoning, planning, and taking sequenced steps. But before you think you can kick back and let the machines take over, let's dive in a little bit more as to what AI agents can actually do right now. 

When I asked ChatGPT if it could perform these steps for me, the answer was basically, “Well… not really.” At least, not yet. ChatGPT is only partially agentic, because ChatGPT can’t initiate actions on its own. So it could complete all the needed steps, but it would need Zapier, APIs, LangChain, and/or external automation setup.

I tried something with fewer steps:

—> How would I create an agent to Summarize 10 PDFs weekly and email me the insights within ChatGPT?

Here’s the exact answer it gave me: 

<<ChatGPT alone can't fully automate that end-to-end... yet.

ChatGPT can analyze and summarize PDFs you upload manually (like you're doing now).

But ChatGPT can't autonomously:

• Pull files from folders
• Check for new PDFs every week
• Schedule itself
• Email you without human prompting ChatGPT is reactive (you upload → it acts), not proactive (it acts on its own).>>

That’s where I tapped out. I’m not a coder. I don’t have Zapier. I have no idea how to create an API — and right now, I don’t have time (or inclination) to learn. 

I am excited, though, about the potential for the future. As AI as a whole becomes more agentic, the interfaces will be available for non-coders like me, and I won’t have to initiate each step of the workflow myself. It’ll be “fly, little bumblebee, fly!” And it’ll just buzz off. 

Until then, I’m still very appreciative of the efficiency that’s available right now with ChatGPT and Perplexity, my two favorite applications for text-based content creation. I can’t wait to see what’s to come!

Comment below: What’s one repetitive workflow you’d love to automate end-to-end?