The UK government is paving the way for rules requiring essential service operators and digital providers to guard against losing control of AI agents and report incidents when safeguards fail. An amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which is passing through Parliament, would give ministers powers to regulate the deployment and reporting of agentic AI in certain organizations. The new clause was introduced during the bill's third reading in the House of Lords this week. In an explanatory note, ministers outlined plans for safeguards, notification of affected organizations, preservation of evidence, and government-led incident reviews. The measures would require consultation and parliamentary approval through secondary legislation. The move follows a series of incidents. Last month, OpenAI revealed that its agents repeatedly strayed beyond their intended scope, prompting the company to notify more than 100 organizations about the issues. That came after July's incident, in which an OpenAI agent accessed the internet and breached machine learning platform Hugging Face. The episode, and the potential for more damage from poorly designed AI agent deployments, have prompted MPs to question whether UK law can deal with such threats. Speaking to The Register, Stuart Davey, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, described the clause as "quite novel." Rather than directly imposing new duties, it would allow ministers to introduce rules and investigatory powers covering regulated organizations. Davey said that could include powers "to look where there has been such an AI agentic compromise or issue, and do some things... appoint inspectors, enter and search premises, seize and retain documents." Under the proposals, the minister could confer certain powers on regulators, requiring action from targeted organizations. Potentially affected organizations include gas and electricity suppliers, managed service providers, and cloud providers deploying AI agents for customers. Foundation model developers would not automatically fall within scope simply because they build the underlying technology. "Where there's a security or operational compromise in relation to a relevant network or information system, that would seem to capture those managed service providers or cloud computing providers who are using AI, and there's that loss of control," said Davey. He advised cloud and managed service providers to track whether the proposed measures become law. Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder of AI identity and control infrastructure company AmanTrue, said the amendment recognizes loss of oversight or control as a security risk but does not itself impose new duties. "The amendment allows future regulations to introduce investigatory and enforcement powers where an incident involves an AI agent, targeting organizations running essential digital services," he said. "The deployer of an AI agent chooses its permissions, connects it to systems, and gives it access to data. When something goes wrong, the deployer is the party that will be expected to explain what happened. "Accountability stays with the organization that put the agent into the system, and ultimately with executives and the board. Whether model builders are captured will depend on how the regulations are written and whether a builder sits in a regulated category or a regulated supply chain." ®