Today, chatbots can answer questions, write poems and generate images. In the future, they could also autonomously perform tasks like online shopping and work with tools like spreadsheets.

Google on Wednesday unveiled a prototype of this technology, which artificial intelligence researchers call an A.I. agent.

Google is among the many tech companies building A.I. agents. Various A.I. start-ups, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have unveiled similar prototypes that can use software apps, websites and other online tools.

Google’s new prototype, called Mariner, is based on Gemini 2.0, which the company also unveiled on Wednesday. Gemini is the core technology that underpins many of the company’s A.I. products and research experiments. Versions of the system will power the company’s chatbot of the same name and A.I. Overviews, a Google search tool that directly answers user questions.

“We’re basically allowing users to type requests into their web browser and have Mariner take actions on their behalf,” Jaclyn Konzelmann, a Google project manager, said in an interview with The New York Times.