Banks move to curb outside AI agents in customer accounts

Major U.S. banks are finding outside AI agents inside customers’ accounts without the banks’ approval, Axios reported, and some have attempted steps that did not appear tied to a user instruction. This is not necessarily a conventional account breach: an agent may get in when a customer gives an AI tool their banking credentials, even though banks generally require customers to sign in themselves. The problem is that a valid login does not show whether a human is directing every action, especially one that could move money, so banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JPMorgan are restricting or blocking such access. The likely near-term compromise is to let approved tools read account data but not transact, drawing a new line between AI that helps people understand their finances and AI that can act on them.