In March 2025, a research organization called METR published a finding that got less attention than it deserved. They had been measuring something unfashionable: how long AI systems could work on tasks before they broke down. Not what they could do in a single interaction. METR wanted to know how long they could sustain coherent, useful effort.
We are living through a period of immense technological possibilities. Across industries, leaders are being inspired by what AI can achieve, yet realizing that value requires more than just installing new software. To bridge the gap between a successful proof-of-concept and scalable business value, we must embrace a spirit of process reinvention. The projects that succeed are those that treat AI not just as a tool, but as a catalyst for cultural evolution.
Edouard de Mézerac outlines how agentic AI is set to redefine everything from consumer shopping to internal retail operations, and how companies can unlock its full potential.
For much of the past decade, the UK property industry has spoken about Artificial Intelligence as something that is coming: imminent, inevitable, but perpetually just over the horizon. Conference agendas are crowded with PropTech panels, innovation strategies are filled with references to data and automation, and most large firms can point to at least a handful of pilots, lackluster initiatives or proofs of concept.
As a testament to its leadership in data and AI for the built environment, Artefact co-chaired the writing and publishing of the 1st global edition of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) AI Standards. These standards, applicable to all 150,000 chartered surveyors from the 9th of March 2026, are believed to be the first published by any national property trade body and will serve as a template for future guidance on responsible AI deployment.
To understand the landscape of 2026, we must revisit the trajectory of the experience economy over the past few years. In the immediate post-pandemic period, we witnessed the phenomenon of the “Revenge of Presence”: an explosion of mass events, festivals, and performance-driven wellness—marathons, triathlons, and frenetic networking agendas in crowded cafés. However, this excess gave rise to a new pathology: sensory fatigue. The executive of 2026 arrives at events saturated by screens, shallow networking, and endless promises of productivity.
Data-driven transformation should feel like progress, yet petabytes of raw information often sit unused, proofs of concept stall, and siloed teams debate strategy while competitors surge ahead. Artefact halts that stagnation by fusing the intuition of “Art” with the rigor of “Fact.” Artefact streamlines AI scaling by merging technical excellence with business alignment. It transforms costly pilots into measurable enterprise capabilities. As a Premier Google Cloud partner and 2025 AI Partner of the Year for EMEA, it dismantles barriers between business vision and technical reality, builds secure data foundations, deploys tailored AI, and upskills employees so isolated wins scale across the enterprise and measurable impact returns to the agenda.
Agentic AI is transforming back-end operations for businesses. A European telecom reduced service call resolution time by 60%, saved over €1 million annually, and boosted customer satisfaction using AI agents. This example offers key lessons for leaders while highlighting the common challenges companies must navigate when implementing agentic AI.
Is Agentic AI simply an extension of the generative AI projects undertaken until now? The answer is no. The focus is no longer on local optimization through a single use case, but on the complete reinvention of core business processes to extract tangible and measurable value. An agent is not a rebranded assistant. An assistant answers or generates content. An agent, however, aims for a specific business objective, makes decisions, interacts with systems, and executes actions. It maintains a state, manages exceptions, and escalates when it reaches its limits. This difference is not cosmetic: an agent is not designed to "answer," but to act within a process.
