Can I hire an AI agent?

You can, in the sense that you can have an AI agent built and deployed to handle a specific job: answering enquiries, chasing invoices, triaging emails, booking appointments, or drafting quotes. What you are really buying is a system, not an employee. Off-the-shelf agents cost £20 to £500 per month depending on capability and volume. Custom-built agents, tuned to your workflows and connected to your existing tools, typically cost £2,000 to £10,000 to build plus modest monthly running costs. The critical part is scoping: agents work well on narrow, repeatable tasks with clear success criteria and fail on vague ones. Start with one well-defined job, measure the hours saved, then expand. An assessment beforehand tells you which jobs are agent-ready and which still need a human.