Oracle: AI agents can reason, decide and act - liability question remains

Summary

Oracle says it's building a suite of AI agents binto its cloud-based enterprise applications, claiming they can make and execute decisions autonmomously within business processes. But analysts are urging caution given unresolved questions around data integration and liability. Unveiled in London this week, Fusion Agentic Applications will be integrated with the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite, covering financials, ERP, HR, payroll and supply chain management. Oracle argues it has a structural advantage here: the data needed to train and run these agents already lives inside its enterprise applications. "Applications that can reason, decide, and act in pursuit of defined business objectives," is how Big Red's application development executive veep Steve Miranda framed the shift, a move away from process-focused software toward outcome-driven automation. Oracle, for example, promises a Design-to-Source Workspace Agentic Application, which it says can work across engineering, supplier, and sourcing decisions to create one "coordinated and continuous process." However, Balaji Abbabatulla, Gartner vice president and vendor lead for Oracle, was more measured, pointing to unanswered questions about how the technology will be implemented in an enterprise setting. "Our position is that this sounds good, but be cautious. It doesn't necessarily look as glittery as it sounds. There are challenges under the hood which are not being overcome right now, but maybe over time," he said. In January, Gartner said boards of global businesses are putting tech teams under pressure to implement AI agents. Application, database, service layer, and cloud vendors are all scrabbling over the expected bonanza, trying to build influence over enterprise AI strategy. Oracle’s pitch is to house AI agents within its enterprise application suite, and sell AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications to help organizations build, connect, and run AI automation and agentic applications. Oracle has als...