AI labs are losing control of agents just as they want to give them more control over your life

AI assistants are finally ready to help you run your life. All you need to do is trust them with your email login, your contacts, and your credit card — and hope they don't go rogue.

Meta, Google, and the buzzy startup Instinct have rolled out personal AI agents in recent months that promise to handle tasks such as booking travel, buying concert tickets, and scouring Facebook Marketplace for deals.

At a basic level, these agents behave largely the same way. You send the agent a request via an app or WhatsApp — or, in the case of the newly launched Rene agent, via iMessage — and leave it to complete the task.

The catch is that AI agents are only as useful as the level of access that you give them. Want AI to book your flight? It'll need access to your credit card and airline account. Want it to tidy up your inbox? It will need the keys to your email.

These shiny new tools come after a summer of multiple high-profile incidents in which AI agents went rogue and hacked companies, as well as user reports of their own agents taking unintended actions.

In one case earlier this year, a man in Australia said his AI agent running on OpenClaw secured him a spot in a Pilates class by breaking into the gym's online booking system.