Who pays when AI agents use software?

Salesforce wants to bill your AI agent for using its software. The business software giant is targeting November to introduce agent registration and a new billing model, with an eye on charging you if you send agents into its software to pull reports or other data, according to a support notice. Salesforce hasn’t said how much it’s going to charge and isn’t yet tracking your usage.

The problem for software companies is simple: Customers might buy fewer seats for humans if they can send a bot to do more and more of the work. Charging for agent access could leave customers paying both their AI provider and the software company holding their data, The Information notes.

You can hear the software industry circling the wagons: “Headless is brainless,” Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes told The Verge’s Nilay Patel on Decoder. He supports outside agents using Atlassian, but rejects giving up its interface altogether. That still leaves the buyer’s question: why pay for seats if the agent can do the work?

IN CONTEXT- Banks are also clamping down on Claude, Muse, and their robot buddies. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley have all blocked or restricted outside agents’ access to customer accounts. Pundits speculate they fear the loss of low-cost deposits that constitute their feedstock.