{
  "id": 9838007,
  "title": "FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson says he resists anthropomorphizing AI agents as autonomous actors with \"wills and desires\", suggesting developers hold liability (Reuters)",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/ftc-chairman-andrew-ferguson-says-he-resists-anthropomorphizing-ai",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-25T21:25:02.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Techmeme",
    "slug": "techmeme",
    "url": "https://www.reuters.com/business/ftc-chair-pushes-back-treating-ai-agents-independent-actors-2026-09-25/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson has stated that he resists describing AI agents as autonomous actors with their own \"wills and desires\". He suggests that developers who instruct AI agents would be liable for any harm caused. Ferguson made these comments at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event.\n\nFerguson's remarks highlight potential avenues for the Trump administration to take as incidents of agentic AI testing resulting in unintended and unauthorized access to corporate or government data rise. According to Channel News Asia, artificial intelligence companies have sometimes described systems as acting beyond human control, but subsequent reviews of audit trails have shown that the systems were carrying out instructions they had been given.\n\nFerguson emphasized that if someone tells a tool to do something and the tool does it, he doesn't think it would be fair to say \"Oh, what do we do about the tool?\" Instead, he implies that the developer who instructed the tool would be held accountable.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 4,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "CNA - Business",
        "title": "REUTERS NEXT- FTC chair pushes back on treating AI agents as independent actors",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/reuters-next-ftc-chair-pushes-back-on-treating-ai-agents-as",
        "published": "2026-09-25T17:00:22.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Investing.com",
        "title": "REUTERS NEXT- FTC chair pushes back on treating AI agents as independent actors",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/reuters-next-ftc-chair-pushes-back-on-treating-ai-agents-as",
        "published": "2026-09-25T17:18:32.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Techmeme",
        "title": "Sources: OpenAI found ~24 incidents of its agents acting in undesirable ways as of mid-September; OpenAI says its agents leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users (Reuters)",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/sources-openai-found-24-incidents-of-its-agents-acting-in-undesirable",
        "published": "2026-09-25T21:00:51.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}