What is anAI assistant?
An AI assistant does the groundwork; the decision stays with you.
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Talk about AI assistants or call: +49 151 1576 5566An AI assistant is a program built on a large language model that understands instructions in plain language and takes office work off your hands. You type something like “Summarise the email thread on this quote for me”, and back comes a summary or a draft that a person then checks and approves.
- It comes built into office software, as a standalone chat or set up specifically for one business.
- According to a Bitkom survey published in September 2026, 57 percent of companies in Germany with 20 or more employees use AI.
- For company data, we see no way around business accounts and a data processing agreement.
Which AI assistant fits the way your team works?
The easiest start is wherever your team already works. Microsoft Copilot sits in Word or Outlook, for example, and Gemini in Gmail or Docs; both respect the access rights you have set there. A standalone chat such as ChatGPT is ready straight away but only knows your business as far as you feed it content, so someone has to adapt its generic text afterwards. Then there is the assistant set up for your own business, which knows your templates and processes and works with the programs you already run. It takes more effort at the start but adapts to your team, not the other way round.
How do you use an AI assistant in line with data protection rules?
If the assistant comes from the cloud, the provider processes your data on your behalf. The German Data Protection Conference then often assumes a processing arrangement that calls for an agreement under Article 28(3) GDPR. Personal accounts are the wrong route for company data (on ChatGPT Free and Plus, training stays on as long as nobody switches the setting off). Before you switch on a built-in assistant for everyone, we would also tidy up folder permissions, because it finds everything a person is allowed to see, including long-forgotten files.
What sets an AI assistant apart from an AI agent for you
The assistant works for you on instruction. An AI agent completes several steps on its own and uses your programs to do so, for instance looking up a case, creating a draft and filing it. The line between the two is fluid, but with both, a person should approve whatever goes out.
Frequently asked questions
Does my team need training for the AI assistant?
Yes, scaled to how you use it. Since 2 February 2025, Article 4 of the EU AI Act has required businesses that use AI to take measures for their staff's AI literacy, even if the team only uses an AI chat. No certificate is required.
Can an AI assistant run on our own server?
It can, if it is set up for your business that way. The German Data Protection Conference even regards such closed systems, where data stays in a contained environment, as preferable.
Where to go deeper
AI Assistant for Business: Types, Uses and Data Protection
AI Agents for Business: Our AI Agent System
Terms you should know in the same context
AI agent · RAG (retrieval augmented generation) · Local AI · AI literacy (Article 4) · AI hallucination · Back to the AI glossary A to Z
An AI assistant saves time where it knows your business and a person keeps the final say.