Oracle's AI agents can decide and act autonomously, but who's liable when they fail?

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

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Oracle unveiled 22 Fusion Agentic Applications that autonomously reason, decide, and act across finance, HR, supply chain and customer experience workflows. The shift marks a move from passive systems of record to active systems of outcomes. But analysts warn of unresolved liability questions and data integration challenges that could hinder adoption.

Oracle Unveils AI Agents That Autonomously Reason, Decide, and Act

Source: Market Screener

Source: Market Screener

Oracle has launched Fusion Agentic Applications, embedding AI agents directly into its cloud-based enterprise software suite to handle business decisions and execution without human intervention

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. Announced at the Oracle AI World Tour London event, the 22 new applications span finance, ERP, HR, supply chain and customer experience workflows

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. Steve Miranda, Oracle's Executive Vice President of Applications Development, described the shift toward autonomous enterprise software as moving from "passive systems of record" to applications that can "reason, decide, and act in pursuit of defined business objectives"

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From Copilots to Coordinated AI Agents Executing Work

The announcement represents a fundamental departure from earlier generative AI assistants and copilots that merely offered suggestions. These Fusion Agentic Applications comprise coordinated AI agents working as specialized teams to achieve specific outcomes

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. Chris Leone, Executive Vice President of Applications Development at Oracle, explained that "each agent has a specialty and the overall agentic application has a particular outcome that it's trying to achieve"

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. The applications target high-cognitive-load scenarios including workforce scheduling, supplier sourcing, cross-sell program management, and cash collection, with early testing showing time savings of 40% to 50% in support scenarios

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Source: CXOToday

Source: CXOToday

Oracle positions this as outcome-driven automation that transforms how work gets done. The Design-to-Source Workspace Agentic Application, for instance, coordinates engineering, supplier, and sourcing decisions into one continuous process

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. These applications can automate low-value administrative tasks like invoicing, purchase orders, and data entry, allowing humans to focus on negotiations and strategy

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. The agents operate with varying autonomy levels, from "human in the loop" mode requiring approval to fully automated execution

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Data Integration Challenges and the Database-Centric Strategy

Oracle argues it holds a structural advantage because the data needed for agentic AI workloads already resides within its enterprise applications

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. The company is positioning the database as the center of gravity for enterprise AI, arguing that the most secure and scalable approach runs inside the database rather than across fragmented external systems

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. This converged architecture aims to reduce AI data fragmentation by allowing agents to operate directly on live enterprise data without moving information between specialized systems

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Source: SiliconANGLE

Source: SiliconANGLE

However, Balaji Abbabatulla, Gartner vice president and vendor lead for Oracle, expressed caution about data integration realities. Oracle has launched an AI Data Platform to connect non-Oracle repositories and legacy applications like SharePoint, but "there's no kind of autonomous way of synchronizing these different data repositories in the background," he noted

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. Building agents requires significant engineering work, likely requiring Oracle's paid expertise

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. For enterprises already invested in data platforms from Databricks, Snowflake, or Cloudera, "the transition overhead is massive," Abbabatulla warned

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AI Agent Studio and Building Custom Enterprise AI Strategy

Oracle significantly expanded AI Agent Studio with a no-code, natural language agent builder and dedicated ROI dashboard

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. The platform enables customers to create agent-driven applications, assemble teams of agents, and connect them to enterprise workflows

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. It supports integration with external platforms through APIs and the open-source Agent2Agent protocol developed by Google

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Oracle adopted a hybrid pricing model: basic agents using built-in models come with existing applications at no additional charge, while advanced capabilities powered by premium large language models incur usage-based fees

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. The company plans to enable partners to build and distribute their own agentic applications

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Liability and Governance Concerns Remain Unresolved

The critical question of who takes responsibility for AI-driven decisions when they fail remains unanswered. If an AI agent makes a bad decision at scale and speed, cascading errors could spread before detection

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. Oracle's response centers on monitoring and audit tooling, with auditability features to track changes to agent behavior

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. Agents inherit role-based access controls from existing Fusion Applications security frameworks

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But Gartner's Abbabatulla remains unconvinced: "I don't see a clear response from any vendor on the liability issue"

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. Governance and risk management emerged as the highest urgency theme in a January survey of 124 CIOs, with one describing AI governance as "challenging and at times frustrating" due to "complex, unclear processes"

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. Another CIO worried about "over-dependence on one LLM" and raised company risk levels "as we become more dependent on agents"

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Industry Implications and Systems of Outcomes

Mickey North Rizza, IDC group vice-president enterprise software, called the move a "significant shift" in agentic systems, positioning Oracle as a "market shaper towards the Agents as Apps"

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. She noted that success will depend not on "the app with the best UI" but "the agent that reliably completes outcomes that are at scale, with trust"

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. Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia compared the transformation to aviation's shift from propellers to jet engines, expanding capability and opening entirely new markets

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Natalia Rachelson, who leads Fusion Applications product management, emphasized the architectural change: "The enterprise systems of the last 30 to 40 years recorded what happened, reported on what happened, and we all made decisions and moved business forward outside of the system. With agentic applications, it's very much a system that can make decisions autonomously, and act and execute"

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. Leone predicted this shift toward autonomous enterprise software will become standard: "We believe all systems of record will have to become systems of outcomes"

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. With boards pressuring tech teams to deploy agents according to Gartner, Oracle and major platform vendors are competing intensely for position in this emerging market

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