Artificial intelligence is moving quickly from an experimental tool to an everyday part of the workplace. At the same time, the technology is giving cybercriminals new ways to target organizations, employees and the people they serve.

The biggest change in artificial intelligence may not be its ability to provide a better answer. It may be what happens after you ask the question.

For several years, most people have used tools such as ChatGPT as a more conversational search engine—asking questions, summarizing documents or drafting emails. A newer generation of tools, often described as agentic AI, can carry out a series of steps and produce something ready for review.