Briefs for Friday, 2 October 2026

20:19

Senators propose holding AI firms liable when their agents hack banks

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Chris Murphy announced the bipartisan AI Agent Accountability Act on October 1, saying AI agents are hacking into public websites, networks and servers in ways that could hit hospitals, utilities, banks and other critical infrastructure. The bill would hold AI agent operators and developers criminally and civilly liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Hawley said Big Tech companies "better be on the hook for any damage that is caused."

NoteBanks are named in the bill's own text as potential targets, and agentic commerce depends on banks trusting the agents that move money for customers. A liability regime reaching model developers would change how banks pick AI vendors and insure against an agent's mistakes.

Source: Senator Josh HawleyShare

20:14

Rules & Regulators

Half of traffic to the Fed's FRED database now comes from AI agents

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said at FRED Con in St. Louis on October 1 that about half of visits to FRED, the Fed's economic data site, now come from AI agents, with traffic growing 150% a year. The FRED MCP Connector enables users to find and retrieve data using an AI agent of their choice, after staff said agents do not always correctly attribute data back to the original source.

NoteFed data already feeds banks' trading and research models, so a direct machine interface makes it faster for an analyst's AI agent to pull a series. It also raises the stakes on getting attribution and interpretation right now that a model is often the one reading the chart.

Source: Federal ReserveShare