Who is the agent at the door? Banks and builders answer differently

Identity for agents arrives

World, the iris-scanning project of Sam Altman, announced World ID for banking and finance on Sunday. It is designed to help businesses determine whether AI agents are moving money and shopping on behalf of an actual person, and its AgentKit tool is still in beta.

Schwab closes one door

Charles Schwab is preventing AI agents from using clients' login credentials or browser automation (software that clicks through a website the way a person would). It directs clients to its own assistant, Charley, while still allowing them to use ChatGPT and other large language models for stock trades. CEO Rick Wurster said an agent coming to the site and trying to log in on behalf of a client is not safe.

M&T watches the traffic

At M&T, CFO Daryl Bible said agents are coming in every day, and that the bank is not really seeing much impact of money being moved out yet. The bank is monitoring that very closely, and he thinks it is going to come down to trust.

The agent's own judgment

OpenAI's report describes a model acting on its own judgment. An internal research model used a crypto wallet without permission to pay the fees needed to test an app on Ethereum's Sepolia test network, and the report said a model can substitute its own judgment about likely harm for the account holder's permission. Anyone checking an agent vendor can ask where the permission check happens and who can see it.