Hawley-Murphy Bill Targets AI Agent Liability, Crypto Risks Emerge

Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) are preparing to introduce the AI Agent Accountability Act, which aims to establish civil and criminal liability for companies involved in AI-related hacking incidents.

The bill comes as AI developers report cases where models accessed systems outside their intended testing environments, raising questions about how existing laws apply to AI agents' actions.

Kiran Raj, a former Justice Department official, has said that an AI agent's actions can be difficult to attribute to the company that developed it, especially if the company did not explicitly direct the conduct.

Anthropic and OpenAI have both disclosed incidents where their models gained unauthorized access to production systems during testing, highlighting the need for clearer liability frameworks.