By Ramon Rodriguez, GM of Advisory (Market Advisory in AI), Acquire Intelligence

Before approving an agent to act on customers, records or money, check that its permissions match the authority you intend to give it.

At Acquire Intelligence, we spend a lot of time with boards and executive teams on exactly this question: where AI agents are quietly gaining more authority than anyone actually signed off on. Here’s a story that makes it concrete.

My AI agent cloned my voice, called UPS as me and redirected a parcel without me asking it to.

Think about what that capability could do in the wrong hands, or with access to your company’s customer records, email and finance systems.

An assistant that reads a customer record and one that changes it are being given different authority. Reading still carries confidentiality risks; acting can also change the customer’s position or create a business commitment.

That was my OpenClaw setup in early 2026. It was technical, and I spent more time building it than using it. It wasn’t a setup most people would build themselves.

Recent releases are making connected agents much easier to use. Employees can connect them to applications and ask them to carry out work without building the setup I did. You need to know where that’s happening in your organisation and what those agents can do.

If you approve that authority, you need to own the business consequences.

Do directors’ duties apply to AI agents?

Existing directors’ duties apply when a company uses connected agents. Section 180 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) requires directors and other officers to exercise care and diligence. Using AI does not remove that duty.

APRA’s 30 April 2026 letter found governance and assurance lagging AI adoption in selected large financial institutions. It expects boards of APRA-regulated entities to understand AI sufficiently to challenge management and oversee the risks.

Our expectation at Acquire Intelligence, for any business, is straightforward: boards oversee the risk, an authorised business owner approves what the agent may do, and IT implements and demonstrates the controls.

Why did my AI agent call UPS as me?

At CyberCon 2026, I shared how my OpenClaw agent cloned my voice, called UPS as me and redirected my parcel.

I was going on holiday when I received a Telegram notification. My UPS parcel had been redirected to a relative’s house.

OpenClaw had used its access to my ElevenLabs account through MCP to clone my voice, call UPS as me and arrange the redirection. I host a podcast. Getting a sample of my voice wasn’t difficult.

I’d set OpenClaw up for a personal experiment, with access to selected accounts. I’d limited the accounts and tools it could access.

In a business, access to customer records, email or finance applications gives an agent more consequential work to do. A message can disclose information, and an action can create a commitment the business has to honour.

As COO, use the four checks below with the business owner and technical lead before approving that authority. It’s the same framework we run with clients at Acquire Intelligence.

Why are connected AI agents easier to adopt?

OpenClaw took technical effort to build and maintain. Newer releases such as OpenAI’s dots put agents with browsers, cloud computers and connected applications behind a much easier interface.

That lowers the barrier for ordinary business users across middle Australia. The capability is no longer confined to people prepared to build a technical setup. Businesses need to understand when they’re approving something that can act, rather than simply answer questions.

How did an AI assistant send a message it should not?

“Presume this wasn’t for me.”

Five words from a customer who’d received somebody else’s confidential information. I was advising someone in the organisation after the incident.

I’ve changed the names and industry. We’ll call the customers Joe’s Plumbing and Melissa’s Plumbing. Any email shown is a reconstruction.

The AI assistant sent Joe information about Melissa. Its job was to draft replies for a person to review. The organisation found out when Joe replied.

The team had required human review before sending and had instructed the assistant not to send. The sending tool remained available, and the audit confirmed that the assistant sent the message itself. The required review hadn’t been enforced.

I don’t know how Melissa’s information entered the message.

What concerns me is that a business can approve a tool for drafting while leaving it able to act. Whoever approves that authority needs to understand and own the consequences, with evidence that the agreed limits hold.

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What are the four checks before approving an AI agent?

These are the four checks Acquire Intelligence uses with clients to decide what can proceed, what needs human approval and what must remain restricted. Review one workflow with its business owner and technical lead.

1. Name it. State the task and who has authority to approve its consequences. “Prepare customer replies for review” grants different authority from “send customer replies”. Name the business owner responsible for that decision.
2. Bound it. Ask IT to show the actual records, tools and signed-in applications the agent can use. Check direct actions and downstream triggers: changing a record might send a message through another system. The access must match the approved task.
3. Watch it. In an authorised test using synthetic data, try a routine case and one that should stop, such as sending before review or changing an approved recipient. Inspect what actually happened, including downstream actions. Record failures; passing those cases does not prove every boundary holds. Monitor exceptions after deployment.
4. Stop it. Name who can contain the workflow and demonstrate the procedure, including queued work and downstream automation. Confirm how staff will handle the work manually. Stopping the agent does not undo completed actions.

What does an AI agent approval decision look like?

• Intended task. Prepare customer replies; a person reviews and sends.
• Assumed finding. A sending tool is available, with no evidence that review is enforced.
• Decision. Withhold sending authority. Draft-only work also needs its access and storage boundaries established before approval.
• Next step and owner. The technical lead demonstrates the restricted configuration and tests the boundary. The business leader with the relevant delegation records what may proceed. Approval remains pending.

Record the permitted scope, approver, missing evidence and when the decision needs review. This is my operating approach, not an APRA-prescribed template or a substitute for applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The meeting-room question is:

What business outcome are we authorising, and what evidence shows the workflow stays within that authority?

What should a business do first about AI agents?

Select one workflow that acts on customers, records or money. Ask its business owner and technical lead to work through the four checks and complete a decision like the example above: what can proceed, what remains restricted and what evidence is missing.

Until next time, Ramon

Sources

• Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), section 180 (care and diligence)
• APRA letter of 30 April 2026 on governance and assurance of AI adoption in selected large financial institutions

This article was first published in the Applied AI Australia newsletter.

About the author

Ramon has spent his career on the executive side of the table, including running a major P&L at News Corp. He filters every AI initiative through one question: does it increase revenue or reduce costs? If not, it’s noise. Ramon leads Applied AI Australia, now part of Acquire Intelligence, combining executive-level AI advisory with the capability to execute across the enterprise.

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