Geku at WAIC 2026: AI Agents Transition from Q&A Assistants to Task-Executing Agents in Manufacturing

At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Geku (格创东智), the industrial internet and smart manufacturing platform under TCL, outlined its latest thesis on the trajectory of AI agents: they are moving beyond Q&A-style assistants toward agents capable of executing real production tasks, with manufacturing emerging as a critical deployment frontier.

Geku, which has long focused on AI applications in industrial environments, presented this vision as a reflection of a broader industry shift. As large language models grow more capable, expectations for AI agents have moved past conversational interfaces toward genuine participation in production decision-making, equipment scheduling, quality inspection, and other factory-floor operations.

Manufacturing is viewed as a key landing zone for AI agents because of the domain's inherent complexity. In a production environment, an agent must ingest data from multiple sources, coordinate disparate machinery, and make autonomous adjustments based on real-time conditions — a far more demanding scenario than general-purpose dialogue.

WAIC 2026, one of Asia's largest AI gatherings, has drawn a strong contingent of companies focused on industrial deployment this year. Geku's message aligns with a growing consensus among industrial AI players that agentic AI is moving from proof-of-concept toward practical production-line integration.

For manufacturing enterprises, the adoption of AI agents could reshape production management across multiple dimensions: smart scheduling, predictive maintenance, material logistics, and quality traceability are all areas where autonomous agents could drive measurable efficiency gains.

The key question going forward is whether Geku can deliver production-ready, scalable AI agent solutions in real factory environments — and whether this emerging category will draw more industrial internet platforms into the race.