The EU is banning using AI-powered digital assistants throughout on-line conferences. Such assistants are sometimes used to transcribe, take notes, and even file visuals and audio throughout a video convention.
In a presentation from the European Fee delivered to European Digital Innovation Hubs earlier this month, there’s a notice on the “On-line Assembly Etiquette” slide that states “No AI Brokers are allowed.”
AI brokers are instruments that may carry out complicated, multi-step duties autonomously typically by interacting with purposes, equivalent to video conferencing software program. For instance, Salesforce makes use of AI brokers to name gross sales leads.
The Fee confirmed this presentation was the primary time this rule had been imposed however declined to clarify why when questioned by Politico. There isn’t any particular EU laws that covers AI brokers, however the AI fashions that energy them might want to abide by the strict and controversial guidelines of the AI Act.
AI brokers elevate safety considerations
Whereas AI notetakers and different agent sorts will not be inherently a safety menace, in line with a 2025 report from world AI consultants, safety dangers stem from the consumer being unaware of what their AI brokers are doing, their innate skill to function outdoors of the consumer’s management, and potential AI-to-AI interactions. These components make AI brokers much less predictable than commonplace fashions.
SEE: How Can AI Be Used Safely? Researchers From Harvard, MIT, IBM & Microsoft Weigh In
Tech firms do must be cautious when selling merchandise that may accomplish an rising quantity with out the consumer’s consciousness. One of many largest cautionary tales is that of Microsoft Recall, an AI device that allowed customers to manage their PC or search by way of information utilizing pure language.
The comfort got here at a value: Recall captured screenshots of energetic home windows each few seconds, saving them as a timeline, elevating considerations about privateness and information utilization and resulting in important launch delays. Microsoft has since launched a collection of brokers particularly designed to deal with cyber threats.
AI brokers are rising in prevalence
This hasn’t stopped the AI gamers from handing over extra management to their fashions. Anthropic added a Laptop Use function to its Claude Sonnet chatbot in October 2024, which gave it the power to navigate desktop apps, transfer cursors, click on buttons, and kind textual content. Its deep analysis operate, introduced this week, additionally responds to prompts “agentically,” as does Microsoft’s equal.
Final month, OpenAI expanded its text-to-speech and speech-to-text instruments to agentic fashions, indicating their rising relevancy. In January 2025, OpenAI introduced Operator, an agentic device that runs in-browser to autonomously carry out actions equivalent to ordering groceries or reserving excursions.
SEE: EU Invests €1.3 Billion to Increase AI Adoption & Enhance ‘Digital Competencies’
Anthropic and OpenAI are even working collectively to enhance agent expertise, with the latter including assist for the previous’s Mannequin Context Protocol, an open-source commonplace for connecting AI apps, together with brokers, to information repositories. Anthropic has additionally joined forces with Databricks to assist giant company purchasers construct their very own brokers.
TechRepublic predicted on the finish of 2024 that the use of AI brokers will surge this 12 months. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed this in a January weblog submit, saying “we might even see the primary AI brokers ‘be part of the workforce’ and materially change the output of firms.”
By 2028, 33% of enterprise software program purposes will embody agentic AI, up from lower than 1% in 2024, in line with Gartner. A fifth of on-line retailer interactions and at the least 15% of day-to-day work choices will probably be carried out by brokers by that 12 months.
