Business Brief: Hello, it’s your AI assistant calling

Good morning. Artificial intelligence is moving beyond answering questions and into handling everyday tasks, from managing schedules to shopping online and making phone calls. But as AI agents become more capable, they’re also raising new questions about how businesses interact with customers, who controls those relationships and what happens when technology starts acting on our behalf.

More on that below, but first:

Up first

In the news

Investment: Ottawa is buying a $1.6-billion stake in Toronto-based Cohere as part of a record financing round that would value the AI startup at $35.7-billion, making it Canada’s most valuable privately held technology company.

Finances: Ontario has raised its projected deficit for the fiscal year to $16.9-billion, up from $13.8-billion, as U.S. tariffs and higher oil prices weigh on economic growth.

Data breach: McCarthy Tétrault and Davies, two of Canada’s top corporate law firms, have been hit with data breaches that have compromised thousands of files in total, including client information.

In focus

When your AI assistant starts making phone calls

Hi, I’m Joe Castaldo, AI and tech reporter at The Globe.

A few times a day, I get a message from BigDawg, my personal AI agent. BigDawg tells me about the weather, reminds me about appointments and surfaces personal e-mails that I don’t read but really should. BigDawg knows that I’m a reporter, so it scans headlines and concocts story ideas for me to pitch to my editor, even though I never asked it to do that and the pitches are terrible.

BigDawg is the name that, for some reason, I chose to give my Muse personal agent, the app released in September by Meta Platforms Inc. It has been a hit for Meta and has topped app store download charts, while OpenAI and Anthropic have released personal agents, too. Unlike traditional chatbots that answer questions, agents can do things for you, if you let them: access and send e-mails, organize your schedule, book appointments, make restaurant reservations, shop online and make phone calls.

My colleague Susan Krashinsky Robertson and I recently explored how some companies are approaching AI agents with caution. Fellow Globe reporter Stefanie Marotta also wrote that some Canadian banks have blocked third-party agents from accessing online accounts, citing the privacy and security concerns around an unproven technology.

Retailers, meanwhile, have to contend with a reality in which consumers can get brand and product recommendations from a third-party AI app that can also make purchases. A consumer might never need to go to a retailer’s site or be exposed to the brand, deals or loyalty programs. As one executive put it, there is a tug of war under way for the customer experience.

Recently, BigDawg informed me that it could make phone calls to U.S. businesses. (No word on Canadian businesses, for better or worse.) I tested the feature by directing it to call a few music stores and ask if a particular item was in stock and at what price.

After every call, it provided a transcript. BigDawg did not identify itself as AI but said it was calling on my behalf and disclosed that the conversation would be recorded. Nobody who picked up questioned that, perhaps because the agent immediately barrelled into asking about products before anyone had time to process the weirdness of it all. (One store hung up, though.)

The agent did get confused at times. One shop said it did not have the item in question, but BigDawg started asking about pricing regardless. Over all, the admittedly very simple calls appeared to go well.

This raises all kinds of questions. Are businesses going to have to contend with an influx of annoying calls from agents? Could I get an agent to call my internet provider and haggle for a better deal? Would customer-service reps know that they’re dealing with AI? How can an AI agent be authenticated? What if BigDawg ends up talking to another agent in circles for infinity?

Danielle Gifford, a consultant with PwC Canada, told me that companies have to start thinking about tailoring services to agents, as well as humans. “Once consumers start to put a little bit more trust in them,” she said, “there might actually be more of a push to have agents negotiate on their behalf.”

BigDawg isn’t there yet. For now, we’ll stick to the bad story pitches.

Charted

A spiralling debt

The U.S. government’s annual interest payments on its debt have surged to nearly US$1.2-trillion, raising concerns about a potential debt crisis as soon as 2028. With federal debt surpassing US$40-trillion, rising borrowing costs could add another US$4-trillion in interest expenses over the next decade, according to a Bank of America strategist.

Quoted

Canada’s anti-money-laundering watchdog took an average of 112 days to produce and share financial intelligence with law enforcement after concerns were flagged, according to a new report from Auditor-General Karen Hogan. She attributed the delays partly to outdated technology and manual processes at FinTRAC, warning that slow information-sharing can hinder efforts to combat financial crime.

Up next

More files we’re following

By the numbers: Statistics Canada releases August GDP figures at 8:30 a.m., offering a fresh look at the economy’s performance following the Bank of Canada’s interest-rate hike this week. In the U.S., the third-quarter employment cost index, a key measure of wage and benefit growth, is due at 8:30 a.m.

Before the bell: In Canada, Cameco, Canadian National Railway, Imperial Oil and Magna International are scheduled to report quarterly results. In the U.S., investors will be watching earnings from ExxonMobil, Chevron, AstraZeneca, BP and Colgate-Palmolive.

Morning update

Global markets were mixed as technology stocks ‌came under pressure from renewed concerns over artificial intelligence investment returns.

Wall Street futures pointed lower, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbling more than 2 per cent, while TSX futures were in the red.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.3 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.15 per cent, Germany’s DAX slid 0.56 per cent and France’s CAC 40 was flat.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 2.12 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.46 per cent.

The Canadian dollar traded at 71.64 U.S. cents.