Can AI agents answer general knowledge questions?

Question

Can my AI agent answer general knowledge questions or widely known facts that aren’t included in my connected knowledge sources?

Answer

No. AI agents in Zendesk answer questions using the use cases you configure and the knowledge sources you connect to your account.

If a user asks a general knowledge question, such as “What is the capital of France?”, and that information isn’t available in the connected knowledge sources, the AI agent typically won’t answer it as a supported fact. Instead, it may fall back to another configured behavior, such as the Technical Error Reply use case, or another response path it determines is more appropriate.

This behavior is intentional. The AI agent focuses on content from connected knowledge sources, including your Zendesk Help Center and external knowledge sources. The AI agent stays grounded in your approved support content rather than act as a general-purpose knowledge bot. It works best when answering questions about your products and features, guiding common troubleshooting steps, and surfacing relevant help center content from connected and accessible sources.

For more information, see Connecting knowledge sources to power generative replies in AI agents.