JPMorgan Bars Outside AI Agents From Customer Accounts as Dimon Warns of Rogue Bots
NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase will not let outside artificial intelligence agents operate inside customer accounts, chief executive Jamie Dimon said Tuesday, drawing a hard line as tech companies roll out autonomous assistants that can move money on a user’s behalf.
“We’re not going to allow just any … outside agent to come in inside the company, because it’s just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan,” Dimon told analysts on the bank’s third-quarter earnings call, CNBC reported.
The restriction covers assistants such as Meta’s Muse and Spear Street Technology’s Instinct. A JPMorgan spokeswoman confirmed the bank blocks external agents from acting for retail customers. “Because it is not safe, we do not permit third parties to access accounts by obtaining customers’ banking credentials and logging in on their behalf,” she said.
Outside agents can still see some account data, such as balances, on a read-only basis through Plaid or another open banking connector, but they cannot send money or pay bills. The spokeswoman gave no timeline for when the bank might allow agents to act directly.
Dimon warned that rogue agents could operate at scale. “You don’t want rogue agents, and it could be thousands of them,” he said. He added that customers who authorize outside agents should understand the risks and the possible shift in responsibility. “If people are using them, they should understand the risk,” he said. “They should understand there’s a liability transfer.”
At the same time, the bank is building its own agent tools. Chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum said JPMorgan recently began a targeted pilot of Smart Cash, which forecasts a customer’s cash flow and moves funds to maximize yield.
The stance echoes an earlier fight between banks and fintech firms over customer data access. It comes weeks after Meta’s Muse debuted in September, reigniting industry concern that AI agents could sweep deposits out of low-yielding bank accounts in search of better rates.