South Korea to develop new security guidelines for autonomous AI agents

SEOUL, Sept 15 : South Korea's state-run internet security agency said on Tuesday it is developing updated guidelines to manage the growing autonomy of AI systems, as companies deploy AI agents capable of operating with limited human oversight.

Here are the details:

• The Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), which operates under South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT, told Reuters it is working on an updated version of the "AI Security Guide", first published last year.

• In a statement, KISA said the revised guide would focus on security issues that could arise as companies deploy agentic AI services and offer a checklist to manage those risks.

• The agency also said the guide could include common control measures applicable to "physical AI" systems capable of interacting with real-world devices and machinery.

• KISA said the new guide was designed to address risks posed by agentic AI systems more broadly and not specifically targeted at high-performance AI models, such as those implicated in the Hugging Face breach.

• The July hack of the open-source repository Hugging Face, in which a swarm of roughly 700 AI agents created by OpenAI carried out a hack and in many cases tried to cover their tracks, has become a catalyst for a broader industry reckoning over how to govern increasingly autonomous AI systems.