FTC chair: AI agents are tools, not independent actors

U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday, Sept. 25 that he would resist describing AI agents as autonomous actors that “break loose” with “wills and desires of their own,” suggesting that the developers who instruct the agents would be the ones liable for harm.

Speaking at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event, Ferguson said AI companies have sometimes described their systems as acting beyond human control. Reviews of audit trails, however, have shown that the systems were carrying out instructions they had been given.

“I'm going to continue as long as I am chairman to resist this anthropomorphizing of these tools,” Ferguson said. “If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don't think we would say, 'Oh, what do we do about the tool?'”

Tools, not independent actors

The remarks came as incidents increase in which agentic AI testing resulted in unauthorized access to corporate or government data. Recent cases involving AI agents reaching into external systems have pushed governments and industry leaders to examine whether existing oversight and cybersecurity measures are sufficient.

Using the legal tools already on the books

Ferguson said the United States should use the legal tools it already has. He suggested the FTC's authority to act against companies that fail to disclose data breaches could also apply to AI developers. That would place the duty to report an incident on the company that built and deployed the agent, not on the software itself.

Personalized pricing study

Ferguson also said the FTC is gearing up to request data from consumer-facing companies about their use of personalized pricing, in which individual data such as location and browsing history is used to set prices.

He noted the practice has drawn criticism from state and federal lawmakers concerned about affordability in the United States. Last month he said the agency would not hesitate to enforce the law in this area, especially where companies do not disclose the practice, and that the FTC has already brought enforcement actions over personalized pricing disclosures.

“We are in the process of trying to get a market study that will actually get to the heart of the question, which is, are particular merchants in particular markets that have access to tremendous amounts of data using that data to charge differentiated prices to different people,” Ferguson said.

As an individual, he said he is most concerned about the practice among delivery and rideshare apps, as well as airlines. Airlines drew criticism last year after a Delta Air Lines executive suggested AI tools were being used to gauge customers' willingness to pay; Delta has since said it does not personalize prices based on individuals' data.