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 Commission delivered to European Digital Innovation Hubs earlier this month, there’s a word on the “Online Meeting Etiquette” slide that states “No AI Agents are allowed.”
AI brokers are instruments that may carry out advanced, multi-step duties autonomously usually by interacting with functions, equivalent to video conferencing software program. For instance, Salesforce makes use of AI brokers to name gross sales leads.
The Commission confirmed this presentation was the primary time this rule had been imposed however declined to elucidate 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 increase safety issues
While AI notetakers and different agent sorts should not inherently a safety risk, in line with a 2025 report from world AI specialists, safety dangers stem from the consumer being unaware of what their AI brokers are doing, their innate potential 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 need to be cautious when selling merchandise that may accomplish an rising quantity with out the consumer’s consciousness. One of the largest cautionary tales is that of Microsoft Recall, an AI device that allowed customers to manage their PC or search by recordsdata 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 issues about privateness and information utilization and resulting in significant launch delays. Microsoft has since launched a collection of brokers specifically 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 Computer Use characteristic 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.
Last 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 Boost AI Adoption & Improve ‘Digital Competencies’
Anthropic and OpenAI are even working collectively to enhance agent know-how, with the latter including assist for the previous’s Model 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 shoppers construct their very own brokers.
TechRepublic predicted on the finish of 2024 that the use of AI brokers will surge this yr. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed this in a January weblog put up, saying “we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.”
By 2028, 33% of enterprise software program functions will embody agentic AI, up from lower than 1% in 2024, in line with Gartner. A fifth of on-line retailer interactions and no less than 15% of day-to-day work selections will likely be performed by brokers by that yr.