Frequently asked questions about Athena and AI agents
What Athena is, what AI agents can do for your organization, how you stay in control, and how to get started.
What is Athena Intelligence?
Athena Intelligence is an enterprise platform for building and running AI agents that do multi-step work across your systems: researching, analyzing data, drafting documents and decks, running recurring workflows, and powering internal applications. Every action is attributed and reversible.
How is an AI agent different from an AI assistant or chatbot?
An assistant answers questions. An agent finishes work: it follows a procedure across several systems, produces the document, report, or update, shows its sources, and waits for approval where you require it.
Who uses Athena?
Enterprises in retail, consumer goods, professional services, legal, finance, and software use Athena across functions such as finance, operations, data and analytics, legal, sales, and IT.
Does Athena replace our existing systems?
No. Athena works on top of the systems you already run, using the access people already have. Nothing has to be ripped out to start.
What kinds of work can agents take on?
Recurring, multi-step work with a known standard of done: reports and briefings, reconciliations, document review, monitoring for issues, data preparation, research, and first drafts. People review the results and make the decisions.
How do we find where agents will pay off?
Look for work that repeats, spans several systems, and follows a known standard. Start with one such job and measure the hours returned.
Can agents build applications and tools?
Yes. Agents build internal tools, dashboards, assistants, and client portals together with your team, and you publish them with versions, staging, and rollback.
Where do people use agents?
On the web, on mobile, by email, in chat tools, by text and voice, and inside Office. It is the same agent with the same permissions everywhere.
How do we stay in control of what agents do?
Every action is logged and attributed, important steps wait for a named person's approval, budgets cap what any run can cost, and any change can be rolled back. Your admins set the rules.
What data can an agent see?
Only what the person or service it works for can already see. Permissions are inherited live from each source system.
Is our data used to train AI models?
No. Enabled model providers are configured so your data is not retained or used for training.
Can we choose which AI models are used?
Yes. Athena routes across a wide range of leading models, and you choose which providers are enabled. You can switch or mix models without rebuilding anything.
How is vendor access handled?
There is no standing vendor access. Support access is requested per incident, approved by you, time-bounded, and logged.
Where can Athena run?
In Athena's cloud, in your own cloud environment, on-premises, or fully air-gapped. The platform is the same everywhere.
Where does our data live?
In your own storage, in open formats, or in the systems you already run. It is not locked into a vendor-owned index.
How do people get access?
Through your identity provider and directory groups, with single sign-on. Access to published applications and portals is included in Athena services.
Are there ready-made AI agent starters I can run on a schedule?
Yes. The Athena Library has 100+ ready-made prompts in 16 job functions, and 80+ run on a schedule, emailing a spreadsheet, PowerPoint deck and Word document after every run.
Start with one workflow.
- 01
Pick one recurring task
A report, reconciliation, review, or brief your team rebuilds by hand.
- 02
Share a sample
An example input and an example of finished work your team would accept.
- 03
See it run
We scope the workflow, connections, and review points with you. Most organizations have a first workflow running in days.