It’s plain nuts to hand over a personal AI agent the keys to your financial life, according to Meta’s former security chief.
Alex Stamos, now the chief security officer for the AI coding startup Cognition, called it “totally insane” that people are giving AI agent apps access to highly sensitive personal data.
On a recent episode of the Big Technology Podcast, Stamos said people are giving agents like Meta’s Muse and Spear Street Technology’s Instinct their entire 1Password vaults, then asking them to “go handle my finances for me” or “go file my taxes.”
This dynamic, said Stamos, has created a dilemma for banks that are now grappling with a growing wave of customer-authorized bot activity.
“So that’s what the banks are talking about is that they now see all of these interactions with them that are authenticated correctly — so they’re not stolen credentials — but are clearly bots doing interaction,” Stamos said.
In Stamos’ view, Instinct’s popularity stems in part from what he said is its ability to bypass safeguards meant to prevent bots from operating in these cases.
“That’s why Instinct is useful because it will effectively bypass the safety protections that are in place at these companies to keep you from doing exactly what you’re doing, which is to have your bot interact with the most important parts of your life,” he said.
Stamos said the result is a “crazy tension” between financial institutions trying to “prevent automated access” to systems and consumers who want to make life easier by turning over their logins and personal information “to a company that’s existed for six months.”
Representatives for Instinct did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Stamos’ remarks. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment.
Meta previously said in a blog post that Muse, launched in September, runs on its own computer in the cloud, so no other agent can access it.
In recent weeks, some bank CEOs have sounded the alarm about consumers granting third-party AI agents access to their financial accounts.
“If people are using them, they should understand the risk,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said during an October earnings call. He added there’s a “liability transfer” away from the bank, as well as risks that their data is “misused.”
Dimon said JPMorgan is developing its own agentic tools for clients, while guarding the bank from outside agents.
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