After the revelation, Reuters reported that US banks are taking steps to block the unvetted agents. On Thursday, Axios reported that major banks in the US have found unauthorized AI agents operating inside customers’ accounts and taking actions without the customers’ permission.
Reuters reported that sources say that the most major US banks are now blocking these agents. Axios confirmed that Bank of America and Citi have also taken steps to ensure that unvetted AI agents don’t access the accounts. AI agents are third-party software that operate inside bank accounts, helping customers manage them. But it is alarming, as the transactions would otherwise be legal, since the credentials were shared by the customers. Amid the onslaught of AI agents, banks are taking preventive measures to ensure accounts are not compromised by those agents. Among them is Morgan Stanley , which has blocked AI agents from accessing accounts on its platform.
Banks are detecting these agents trying to take actions in the accounts that were never authorized by the customers, according to the Axios report. In some cases, the report says customers have shared their login ID and password with the agents, but the bank’s system stepped in and blocked the transactions. A spokesperson for the bank said that they have not observed cases of “rogue AI agents accessing our platforms.
AI Agents Major Threat For US Banking Industry
Richard Wurster, the CEO of Charles Schwab, also confirmed that the brokerage is blocking AI agents. Because that’s just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan, jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had said that the bank will not allow “just any outside agent to come in inside the company. Because i think people aren’t using it in that way in their financial life, “I get a report every day tracking how many times we’ve had to block one of the different agents, and it’s not many. Because we want to have control over authentication and the experience,” Wurster said, we are blocking it.
JPMorgan Chase and the brokerage Charles Schwab, two of the US’s major financial institutions, addressed the threat of AI agents earlier in October.
