Among the sharpening of spearheads before IBC 2026, we have heard plenty of calls to arms across the industry for this to be the year when AI agents actually do something. A similar echo chamber was observed at IBC 2025, and to some extent at IBC 2024, so what is different this time around? Naturally, the degree of autonomy that technology vendors now claim to be deploying in media workflows—or, in many cases, still trialing—has changed considerably over the past twelve months. It is our job to get a grasp of that change, which is why we thought a useful pre-IBC exercise would be to lay out a rough AI agent taxonomy. There is certainly no shortage of terminology to…