Chatbots and AI agents are converging. Today they serve separate functions: chatbots process and explain information, agents execute tasks by taking direct control of software and systems. That boundary is dissolving.
The merge point is permission. When you use a chatbot to research hotels or companies, the next logical step is the bot acting on that research directly, booking, contacting, purchasing, without you switching to a separate tool. The article traces exactly how that handoff works and where the current technical and trust barriers sit.
What makes this worth reading in full is not the conclusion but the mechanism: how agent architecture gets grafted onto conversational interfaces, which companies are closest to shipping this, and what it means when a single system both advises you and acts for you.
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