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Mastercard has launched a program that issues virtual payment cards specifically to AI agents so they can complete purchases on behalf of consumers. The initiative pushes 'agentic commerce'—where software autonomously browses, selects and buys items—further into the mainstream payments ecosystem.
Mastercard has signed a new deal aimed at letting AI-driven shopping agents complete purchases using customer payment credentials. The move comes as rivals Visa and American Express are also preparing their own systems to support autonomous, AI-powered shopping bots.
Security researchers have identified a novel attack technique, dubbed BragJack, that exploits agentic AI assistants embedded directly in web browsers. The attack allows malicious actors to manipulate these assistants into accessing sensitive user information, performing unauthorized actions, and exfiltrating data without the user's knowledge.
AgentsDock is a new integrated development environment designed specifically for researchers building and testing agentic AI systems. It lets users connect multiple machines — such as lab workstations, home computers, and rented GPU servers — and switch between them from any device.
Gill Haus, CIO of Chase's consumer banking division, said the bank no longer hires engineers primarily to write code, since AI agents increasingly handle that task. Instead, he looks for engineers who understand what code should be written and how to evaluate and direct AI-generated output, while product leaders are also taking on coding responsibilities.
An AI safety expert cautioned that businesses are rapidly rolling out autonomous AI agents without adequate frameworks to manage the risks involved. The warning followed a day after an Anthropic researcher resigned, citing fears that fast-advancing AI systems could pose existential dangers to humanity.
A new study by researcher Chris Schmitz tracks 84 cases across 11 jurisdictions showing sharp increases in filings to public services since ChatGPT's launch. UK housing ombudsman complaints more than doubled from 2,600 in 2022 to over 7,000 last year, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau saw complaints grow fivefold, and similar spikes occurred in Brazilian court petitions and German parliamentary submissions. Schmitz's paper, to be presented at the AI Ethics and Society conference, links the rise to AI tools making it easier to draft forms and complaints, though it stops short of proving direct causation.
Arm announced a wave of agentic AI-focused updates to its IP portfolio at its Arm Everywhere China event, spanning mobile devices, robotics, and cloud/enterprise infrastructure. Among the highlights is the Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU, which integrates neural accelerators capable of delivering AI graphics performance at under one watt of power for mobile devices.
Payments firm Ramp's survey of 70,000 businesses found only 56% paid for AI tools in August, up just 0.4% from July, marking a sharp deceleration in adoption. Spending per employee among the top 1% of firms fell nearly 10% to $7,205, which Ramp economist Ara Kharazian attributes partly to seasonal vacation effects and partly to falling token prices, now averaging $0.68 per million tokens versus a March peak of $1.15.
Tailwind Labs, creator of the widely used Tailwind CSS framework, announced it is joining Shopify. The framework, installed over 110 million times weekly and used by companies like OpenAI, X, Cloudflare and Reddit, will now be developed within Shopify's product ecosystem rather than as a standalone business.
Meta has introduced Muse, a new AI system that can carry out tasks like drafting emails or hunting for deals after users approve a plan of action. It runs in a private virtual machine and uses a separate 'Sentinel' agent to block unauthorized online actions, with rollout starting on iOS and Android in the US.
Meta rolled out Muse, a new autonomous AI agent that CEO Mark Zuckerberg says learns a user's habits and goals to handle everyday tasks like online shopping, drafting documents, filling out forms, and answering emails. Users must grant Muse permission to access their apps and data, and Meta says a separate 'Sentinel' system monitors its actions to prevent it from acting without oversight. The tool is now live in the US on iOS, Android, and via the muse.ai website.