We're rapidly transitioning to a computing landscape defined by highly general, increasingly autonomous agents. Driven by large language models (LLMs) that can dynamically generate plans and invoke external tools, these systems offer the potential for AI to seamlessly handle complex, multi-step tasks on our behalf. However, realizing this potential requires solving a key challenge: enabling agent capability while ensuring that agents act appropriately. Today, we share a comprehensive new workshop report, "Open and Emergent Problems in Agentic Privacy and Security: A Contextual Angle," the result of a collaborative effort bringing together more than 50 academic and industry leaders from numerous institutions. We met at the Google Contextual Agent Privacy and Security (CAPS) Workshop, held in late 2025 in New York City.
The core challenge of agentic AI is that, for an agent to be useful, it may need to have access to personal data and the ability to take consequential actions across a broad range of contexts. However, this access together with agents’ behavioral flexibility requires meaningfully different approaches from those used in traditional software. Unlike traditional deterministic software, agents differ in three critical dimensions: Unstructured interfaces and input ambiguity, Probabilistic control flows, and Autonomy and delegation.
Given that useful agents may need to share data and complete tasks, we believe that the future of trustworthy agents depends on their ability to reason about, understand, and be constrained by the social norms and appropriateness of their actions— for the specific context in which they operate. Our report is grounded in the theory of Contextual Integrity (CI), which defines privacy not just as secrecy or control, but as "appropriate information flow" according to established and justifiable social norms. For example, you might be willing to share your gift shopping list with a virtual shopping assistant, but not your family and friends.
Source: Google AI Blog · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing