Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Can you do anything else but factcheck ?
Executive summary
You’re asking whether I can do anything beyond fact‑checking; available reporting shows AI in 2025 is doing far more than verifying facts — from agentic workflows and multimodal assistants to browser integrations and “virtual scientists” — but many accounts caution that these systems still require human oversight and face scaling, governance, and safety limits (examples: agent adoption and pilots, inference-cost drops, new products) [1] [2] [3].
1. What “do anything else” means in practice: agents, assistants and automation
By 2025, multiple outlets describe AI systems that act beyond simple fact checks: “AI agents” are framed as systems that can plan and execute multi‑step workflows and interface with software, effectively doing tasks for humans rather than only answering questions (McKinsey calls them “systems based on foundation models capable of acting in the real world” and planning multi‑step workflows) [1]. Corporates report pilots and early deployments where agents automate workplace processes; coverage treats agentic workflows as a real trend, not merely hype [4] [1].
2. New product classes show capabilities beyond verification
Vendors and reporters list concrete products that go well beyond fact‑checking: OpenAI’s reported “Atlas” browser integrates an assistant that summarizes complex information and automates tasks in a browsing context [3]; companies advertise multimodal models and custom GPTs that write, code, analyze images and generate audio (executive rankings cite multimodal ChatGPT‑5 and Claude variants) [5]. These are designed to synthesize, act and produce artifacts, not simply evaluate facts [5] [3].
3. Technical enablers: cheaper inference, memory and multi‑agent setups
A major enabler is sharply lower inference cost: Stanford’s AI Index documents that inference cost for GPT‑3.5‑level systems dropped roughly 280‑fold between Nov 2022 and Oct 2024, which democratizes routine compute and supports richer applications beyond simple lookups [2]. Reporting also highlights multi‑agent systems and long‑term memory as architectural trends that let models manage ongoing projects and coordinate tasks over time [6] [7].
4. Ambition vs. reality: rhetoric of autonomy and the continuing human role
Some narratives frame 2025 agents as “fully autonomous” project executors, but several sources caution this is an aspirational definition and that scaling remains challenging (IBM’s piece notes the “assumes” language around full autonomy and questions click‑bait narratives) [8] [4]. Industry surveys and analysis stress that most organizations are still early in scaling and that human oversight, governance and integration remain core constraints (McKinsey on early‑stage scaling; RiskInfo on mandatory governance) [1] [4].
5. Where fact‑checking fits: necessary but insufficient
Fact‑checking is one important AI role — e.g., summarizing and verifying claims — but the broad suite of 2025 capabilities includes research automation (a “virtual scientist” that designs and analyzes experiments), browser task automation, audio generation, and code agents, which perform generative and operational work beyond pure verification (Crescendo’s product list and reports of a “virtual scientist”) [3]. Thus, AI’s remit in practice is much wider than only checking facts [3].
6. Competing perspectives and implicit agendas to watch
Industry pieces (Forbes, Synergy, Digital Bricks) emphasize productivity gains and competitive advantage from agentic systems, an executive‑oriented framing that supports business adoption narratives [5] [6] [7]. Academic and policy‑oriented sources (Stanford AI Index, AAAI, IEEE/Technology Review coverage) emphasize metrics, costs, and regulation, signaling concerns about safety, fairness and geopolitical competition rather than pure marketing optimism [2] [9] [10]. Vendor blogs and marketing (OpenAI/Google summaries in coverage) can overstate autonomy; independent indexes and surveys temper those claims [3] [2] [1].
7. Bottom line for your original question
Yes — based on the reporting you supplied — AI systems in 2025 are reported to do many things beyond fact‑checking: they plan, act, generate multimodal content, automate workflows, and even run experiments, enabled by cheaper inference and new architectures [2] [3] [6]. However, the degree of autonomy varies by source and many reporters and analysts emphasize that full, human‑free autonomy is still an assumption or a near‑term goal rather than a settled reality [8] [1].