Google is quietly preparing a new stage in consumer artificial intelligence. Its code name: “Remy”. Behind this still unofficial designation lies a major shift in the history of digital usage. This is no longer simply a conversational assistant capable of answering questions. It’s an autonomous AI agent capable of acting directly on behalf of the user on their emails, documents, calendar, purchases, notifications, or professional tools.
The subject goes far beyond a technological announcement. Behind the innovation lies a profound transformation in the relationship between humans, businesses, and information systems. Google is no longer solely seeking to create a conversational interface. The group appears to want to build a permanent layer of intent between the user and their entire digital life.
This shift opens a new phase of AI: the era of operational agents. With it emerges a major risk still largely underestimated in businesses: Shadow AI.
From Conversational AI to Agentic AI
Since the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022, the uses of generative AI have spread at an exceptional speed in organizations. Employees now use daily tools capable of writing emails, summarizing documents, analyzing data, or producing marketing content.
But until now, the user remained relatively at the center of the decision-making loop. AI suggested. Humans validated.
The agentic approach radically modifies this logic. An autonomous AI agent no longer simply produces a response. It can trigger actions, chain tasks, access different systems, memorize habits, and make certain operational decisions without constant solicitation.
The difference is fundamental. We are gradually moving from an AI that speaks to an AI that acts. Projects like OpenClaw, AutoGPT, Devin, or Operator already illustrate this evolution. OpenClaw particularly symbolizes this new generation of agents capable of interacting directly with digital tools such as emails, calendars, browsers, messaging apps, or SaaS platforms.
The strategic interest for technology giants then becomes obvious. Whoever controls the personal AI agent will potentially control the work interface, information flows, digital behaviors, consumption choices, and an increasing part of daily decisions.
Google Wants to Become the Invisible Orchestrator of Digital Life
The supposed positioning of “Remy” is particularly revealing. According to several pieces of information circulating in the technology ecosystem, Google is reportedly working on a Gemini agent capable of operating continuously as a “24/7 digital partner”.
The term is far from trivial. The objective no longer seems to be solely cognitive assistance. The ambition becomes the orchestration of digital life. Gmail emails, Google Drive documents, browsing history, calendar, purchases, location, Android apps, notifications, or search history: Google already possesses a considerable amount of contextual data on users. Adding an autonomous AI agent transforms this information heritage into action capacity.
This is precisely what distinguishes future AI agents from previous assistants. Intelligence no longer resides solely in text generation. It now resides in permanent contextual understanding and the ability to execute. This change may seem convenient for the general public. But it becomes much more complex in a professional environment.
Shadow AI Changes Scale
Shadow IT has existed for decades. Employees regularly use tools not validated by IT departments. Dropbox, WhatsApp, Trello, Google Docs, or Slack all followed this trajectory before their official adoption.
Shadow AI represents a much more powerful version of this phenomenon. An employee discreetly using ChatGPT to reformulate an email already constitutes a first level of risk. But an autonomous agent simultaneously connected to professional emails, internal documents, meetings, calendars, CRMs, HR tools, financial platforms, and business applications completely changes the equation.
The danger no longer comes solely from voluntary data leakage. It stems from the implicit delegation of decision-making processes to ungoverned systems. Google itself acknowledges in certain internal documentation that Gemini “may inadvertently disclose data”. This sentence deserves particular attention. AI agents don’t just manipulate isolated data. They create extremely powerful contextual correlations between personal and professional information.
The boundary between private sphere and business environment then becomes particularly porous.
Governance Still Largely Absent
The majority of businesses are not prepared for this evolution.
For two years, organizations have mainly focused on productivity gains, quick use cases, document automation, AI copilots, and business experiments. Few of them currently have specific governance for autonomous agents, a mapping of actual AI uses, complete observability of AI interactions, or a clear policy on agent action rights.
The problem is structural. Companies have often approached AI as just another IT tool. However, AI agents profoundly modify the operational structure of organizations. They are gradually becoming quasi-actors in the information system.
This evolution raises unprecedented questions. Who is responsible for an agent’s error? How do you trace a decision made automatically? How do you distinguish a human action from an AI action? How do you audit an agent connected to multiple systems? How do you prevent involuntary exfiltration of sensitive data?
These issues become even more critical in regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, defense, legal, insurance, or energy.
The Illusion of Intelligent Autonomy
One of the major risks lies in the growing anthropomorphization of AI agents. Companies are already beginning to talk about “assistants”, “virtual collaborators”, or “employee agents”.
This semantics gradually modifies the perception of risk. The more autonomous and conversational an agent seems, the more the user tends to grant it implicit trust.
However, generative models remain probabilistic. They can hallucinate, incorrectly interpret a context, execute a wrong action, disclose sensitive information, or amplify operational errors. The problem then becomes less technical than cognitive. The user gradually stops verifying.
Several recent studies already mention a phenomenon of “cognitive debt” linked to intensive use of generative AI. The more autonomous systems become, the greater the risk of human critical disengagement.
With agents capable of acting directly, this issue could take on considerable magnitude.
A New Cyber Attack Surface
AI agents also create a new category of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Historically, attackers targeted users, endpoints, servers, or applications. Tomorrow, they will potentially target the agents themselves.
Why? Because a connected agent has multiple accesses, contextual memory, cross-functional permissions, and sometimes automatic execution capability. Compromising an AI agent could offer massive access to a company’s data and workflows.
Risks include prompt injection, contextual manipulation, memory poisoning, action hijacking, or invisible data exfiltration.
Cybersecurity departments are only beginning to measure the scale of the issue. However, consumer adoption is likely to go much faster than organizations’ governance capabilities.
The Future of Work Could Be Profoundly Reconfigured
The emergence of AI agents doesn’t only concern technology. It could transform the very structure of knowledge work.
Today, a significant part of tertiary tasks consists of coordinating, searching, organizing, planning, synthesizing, following up, or arbitrating. These are precisely the micro-actions that AI agents can gradually absorb. The potential impact on intermediate professions is major. Support functions, administrative assistants, certain coordination roles, or certain analytical activities could be profoundly reconfigured.
But the most important issue may not be job elimination. We may mainly witness a redistribution of decision-making capabilities.
Employees capable of effectively managing AI agents could see their productivity increase massively. Conversely, organizations unable to govern these new systems risk generating more confusion, more opacity, and increased risks of informational fragmentation.
Europe Facing a Sovereignty Challenge
The development of AI agents also raises a major geopolitical question. The main actors capable of building these infrastructures today remain Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, or Anthropic. In other words, American groups already holding a dominant position on cloud infrastructures, operating systems, search engines, and collaborative platforms.
The AI agent then potentially becomes a new layer of strategic dependency. Whoever controls the agent progressively controls interfaces, behaviors, choices, economic flows, and contextual data.
Europe is attempting to regulate this evolution through the AI Act, GDPR, and various digital sovereignty initiatives. But the speed of usage deployment could exceed that of regulatory frameworks.
The risk is seeing silent operational dependency on foreign AI agents emerge before companies have truly understood their implications.
Boards of Directors Will Have to Address the Issue
For a long time, AI was considered a technical subject under the purview of CIOs or innovation departments. That era is probably coming to an end.
Autonomous AI agents now transform governance, responsibility, compliance, cybersecurity, business processes, and potentially economic models.
The subject becomes strategic.
Boards of directors will need to quickly ask themselves several fundamental questions. Which agents are used in the company? What access do they have? What data do they manipulate? What processes can they trigger? What human supervision actually exists? How do you audit their actions? What traceability should be maintained?
The real challenge is not to ban AI agents. It is to avoid invisible, fragmented, and unmanaged adoption.
Entering the Era of Acting AI
The “Remy” project may still be just a code name. Its public launch remains uncertain. But it already symbolizes a historic shift. For two decades, digital platforms mainly captured our attention. Future AI agents will likely seek to capture our intention.
The difference is considerable.
An AI that understands what we want to do and acts directly on our behalf gradually becomes a permanent operational intermediary. We are thus entering a new phase of digital technology, less conversational, more executive, more autonomous, and potentially much more intrusive. The real debate is therefore no longer only technological. It becomes political, organizational, cognitive, and civilizational.
The central question is no longer: “What can AI answer?” but now: “What can it do without us?”
