Yes, if it's set up with more access than it needs. An agent can repeat private information to the wrong person, send it to an outside service, or be tricked by a message into sharing it. The fixes are plain: give it only the data its job needs, keep private fields out of its reach, check where the vendor stores and sends your data, and require a person's approval before anything leaves your business.
Data usually leaks from an AI agent in one of four ways:
- Too much access. The agent can read every customer record when its job only needs names and appointment times. Whatever it can read, it can repeat.
- Data leaves with the vendor. Your records go to the agent company and the AI model provider behind it. Where they’re stored, for how long, and who else gets them depends on the contract.
- It gets tricked. A message or document tells the agent to share something, and it follows the instruction. This is called prompt injection.
- Nobody reviews what it sends. A reply goes out with another customer’s details in it, and no person saw it first.
What to do about it
- Give the agent the smallest set of data that does the job.
- Keep payment details, health information, employee records and passwords out of its reach entirely.
- Get the vendor’s data terms in writing: storage, retention, deletion and model training.
- Require a person to approve anything that goes outside your business.
- Keep a log of what it read and sent.
The AI Agent Safety Checklist walks through all of this in one page per topic.