Google has introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol designed to securely address the challenges of having AI agents make payments on behalf of humans. AP2 can be used as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). “In concert with industry rules and standards, it establishes a payment-agnostic framework for users, merchants, and payments providers to transact with confidence across all types of payment methods,” explains Google, listing American Express, Coinbase, Etsy, Intuit, Mastercard, PayPal and Salesforce among 60 collaborators that provided development input. Continue reading Google AP2 Protocol Allows AI to Make Payments for Humans

The “open agentic web” was a major focus at the Microsoft Build conference, with dozens of new AI tools and features aimed at helping developers create autonomous systems that can shoulder routine and repetitive duties for human taskmasters and even undertake things like independent research with minimal supervision. The company unveiled a new GitHub Copilot coding agent that “supercharges” the AI assistant, allowing it to undertake more complex tasks and collaborate with other agents. Copilot Tuning was introduced as a “low-code” customization tool for adding corporate data to AI models. In all, Microsoft made more than 50 news announcements. Continue reading Microsoft Promotes AI Agent Capabilities with New Features