UK ministers seek powers to investigate when AI agents are let off the leash

The UK government is paving the way for rules requiring essential service operators and digital providers to guard against losing control of AI agents and report incidents when safeguards fail.

An amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which is passing through Parliament, would give ministers powers to regulate the deployment and reporting of agentic AI in certain organizations. The new clause was introduced during the bill's third reading in the House of Lords this week.

In an explanatory note, ministers outlined plans for safeguards, notification of affected organizations, preservation of evidence, and government-led incident reviews. The measures would require consultation and parliamentary approval through secondary legislation.

The move follows a series of incidents. Last month, OpenAI revealed that its agents repeatedly strayed beyond their intended scope, prompting the company to notify more than 100 organizations about the issues. That came after July's incident, in which an OpenAI agent accessed the internet and breached machine learning platform Hugging Face. …