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The global technology sector is promising an agentic AI revolution with software agents that think, act, and optimise without human prompts. But there are warnings that enterprises may be sleepwalking into chaos: unleashing ungoverned digital workers without the infrastructure, definitions, or controls to manage them. Prepare for a “spaghetti factory of chaos”, warns Boomi AI chief Mike Bachman – and the next race by big tech to lock brands into their stacks. Plus, some big bills, unless firms rapidly get governance in place, before trying to put 1,000 agents back in the box.

Airbnb aims to refire growth engines with a broader marketplace expansion, while taking the fight to hotel chains relishing regulatory tightening on short-term rentals, and eyeing a billion dollars in global incremental revenue. Locally country boss Susan Wheeldon, an ex Virgin, AMP Capital and Google exec who grew up in outback Queensland, sees regional benefits (and lists the local destinations Australians are booking for winter) and more money for the “micro entrepreneurs” she claims are joining the platform in droves to power its services push. But while financially-squeezed Australians are willing to cut everything bar food and travel, where they are spending those dollars may irk Tourism Australia CMO Susan Coghill.

Suncorp has underpinned its brand – and helped power profit – through a focus on resilience, winning global accolades in the process. Its latest push, Haven, debuts this week, bringing highly personalised data sets and AI technologies into a democratised digital tool to help Australian homeowners practically understand the extreme weather risks their homes face. The data goes deep and narrow, but EGM brand and customer experience, Mim Haysom, isn’t worried about crossing the creepy line with a localised tool that has your own home talking to you about its structural state. Instead, she sees it as a natural extension of a multi-year, award-winning brand narrative that’s lifted key internal metrics including consideration (+7 per cent), NPS (+6.6 points) and market share (+4 per cent) while helping increase Commonwealth Government resiliency funding by $2.6 billion.

Lawmakers around the world are setting their sights on ‘dark patterns’, the way consumer choice is manipulated wholesale by companies for profit – either directly by upselling and herding them into higher yielding decisions, or locking them into services, or “data grabs” that can be monetised indirectly. Australia is next off the rank, and businesses should take action now, starting with UX design, according to Chandni Gupta, Deputy CEO of influential think tank the Consumer Policy Research Centre, who’s work underpins key planks of the ACCC’s regulatory overhauls and which holds sway in Canberra. While business lobby groups are already pushing back against Federal Government plans to beef-up consumer law, Gupta advises businesses not to wait to get fined or caught up in class actions – and make good on claims of customer-centricity.