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Researchers say millions of people are using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to improve productivity in their studies and personal lives. The first study on the deployment of AI agents has been published.
AI agents are like online assistants that can plan and execute complex tasks based on user requests with little human supervision. In 2025, many of the world’s largest AI companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, launched or expanded their own digital assistants.
Researchers at Harvard University partnered with one such company, Perplexity AI, to examine data from Comet, the company’s AI browser and digital assistant launched in July 2025.
The researchers analyzed hundreds of millions of queries to understand how the agent is being used and published findings that have not yet been peer-reviewed. online this week.
The researchers categorized users based on their jobs and how they typically use the agent.
The researchers said people who started using AI agents early and users in wealthier and better-educated countries were more likely to “adopt or actively use the agents.”
According to the survey, more than 70% worked in digital or knowledge-intensive fields such as academia, finance, marketing and entrepreneurship.
The fields with the least number of AI agent users were those that “require interaction with the physical environment,” such as energy and agriculture.
36% of all tasks assigned to AI agents were considered “productivity and workflow” tasks, such as creating or editing documents, filtering emails, summarizing investment information, and creating calendar events.
The second most common task was related to “learning and research,” with 21% of queries asking agents to summarize course material and research information.
Other popular jobs included assisting with shopping, travel, and job-related searches.
Users asked the AI agent for help with their personal lives rather than work support. Fifty-five percent of the questions were about life after work, and 30 percent were about work.
A further 16% of queries were related to education.
The study showed that how people use AI agents has evolved over time. Users who started with simple personal tasks like travel and media often pivoted over time to more labor-intensive queries related to productivity, learning, and career.
