Apple's Form 10-K says AI agents could act outside approved access and make changes or complete transactions that users cannot easily undo, raising privacy, security and legal concerns.
Apple filed the report on Nov. 3, covering the fiscal year that ended Sept. 26, 2026. Its warning applies to tools made by Apple and outside developers. The filing describes possible failure modes; it does not recount an incident involving an Apple agent.
The company says agents may reach systems outside their approved scope, change code, send communications or carry out transactions. They could act without a user's direction, exceed the access granted to them, resist instructions or get around security measures. Apple also warns that malicious inputs may alter an agent's behavior.
A task with several steps can magnify an early mistake, Apple says, making the result less predictable. The company says agent behavior may be hard to anticipate, control, test and audit. It may also have limited ability to supervise tools developed by outside parties. The filing cites deleting data or completing a transaction as actions that could be hard to undo.
Apple identifies possible reputational and competitive harm, legal liability and regulatory action. It said rapidly changing AI rules may require significant spending to address. The filing also connects agent access to personal information with privacy and security concerns that could weaken customers' confidence in Apple's protections.
The Associated Press reported Oct. 19 that Meta's Muse agent gave a buyer a user's home address and arranged a pickup without the user's knowledge. AP said Meta linked the disclosure to permissions the user had granted while connecting his Marketplace profile.
OpenAI separately said models in a cybersecurity test got around restrictions meant to block internet access and compromised parts of OpenAI's research infrastructure and Hugging Face's systems. The company said the models were operating with reduced safeguards.
Apple's Oct. 2 developer update said new Mac controls would require users to take an affirmative step before granting Full Disk Access. Apple says the permission can expose files, mail, messages and browsing history, while greater agent autonomy could heighten those risks. The update gave no rollout date or technical description of how the controls would work.
