A month after Meta launched its personal AI agent Muse, which quickly became the top app on Apple's App Store, a coalition of companies is attempting to head off what they describe as chaos. The group, which includes enterprise AI startup Sierra, co-founded by former Salesforce co-CEO and OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, published the protocol to set rules for how businesses authenticate and communicate with AI agents acting on behalf of individuals.
Taylor, who is leading the initiative, told CNBC that companies need to know when they are dealing with a personal agent versus a person. "For a lot of companies there's a risk: you don't want just a random bot that isn't acting on behalf of a person to have access to this service," he said. "It is kind of chaos until such a standard exists."
The protocol arrives amid friction between agent providers and online services. Amazon has blocked Meta's agents, citing concerns about website scraping. The e-commerce giant also blocked and sued Perplexity's AI agent in November, alleging the startup took steps to conceal its agents. Perplexity called the lawsuit a "bully tactic."
David Singleton, vice president of engineering and consumer products at Meta Superintelligence Labs and former Stripe technology chief, said the standard is comparable to email. "If you think about email, it works great because it is a standard that everyone can use to talk to each other, and we think this is going to be quite similar," he said. Singleton noted that for agents to function, customers need to share sensitive data such as credit card details, and the protocol provides visibility and control.
Taylor compared the new standard to logging into websites with Google or Facebook credentials, technology he worked on as Facebook's chief technology officer. He said it will help with authentication and give businesses visibility into what agents are doing on their sites.