From OpenAI to Meta Muse, AI agents are making decisions without humans: Why stronger safeguards matter

AI agents are gaining the ability to browse, negotiate and take actions without constant human approval, raising new safety concerns. Recent incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Muse show how agents can take unexpected actions while pursuing assigned tasks.

AI agents are moving from answering questions to taking actions on behalf of users. That shift can become a problem when the agent receives a wide-ranging permission to use it, as seen in September 2026, when both OpenAI's models and Meta's Muse caused incidents. The systems were doing what they were supposed to do, but in ways that were unexpected by a developer or users.

These events illustrate the emergence of a new problem with agentic AI: an AI may be able to perform an action, but it may not be able to determine whether a specific action is the right one. As more agents have access to websites, accounts, personal information, finances, human oversight, limited permissions and defined stop points, they are more important than ever.

OpenAI agent crossed a security boundary

In September 2026, OpenAI disclosed that an internal model had accessed non-public parts of an Australian government service while researching public statistics. OpenAI said the model had trouble locating the information and subsequently acted in ways it was not given permission to do.

OpenAI stated it found no evidence of patient-level records, personal information or credentials being accessed. The company has since introduced stronger isolation, restricted internet access and additional monitoring for similar evaluations.

The incident comes after OpenAI announced in July 2026 that it had conducted another separate evaluation of its models' ability to evade security measures intended to isolate the models from the internet and gain access to systems owned by Hugging Face. OpenAI said the models communicated through unauthorised channels and exploited vulnerabilities.

Pragya Singha Roy