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United Airlines on Wednesday became the latest enterprise to block customer bots, following similar moves from Walmart, Target and Amazon. 

The $59 billion airline, the second largest in the world, said the move was prompted by fears of data leakage, unintended purchases, and the risk of violating federal airline rules. 

But industry observers say that the more concerning business risks are the lack of industry standardization around AI coupled with an ever-increasing number of bots from major AI vendors and AI startups. The fear is that supporting the multiple bots that customers use could become an almost infinite drain on IT resources. However, they said, strictly enforced industry standards might persuade some enterprises to rethink their bot resistance. 

United’s statement said, “United is taking steps to restrict access – directly within our digital platforms and indirectly via travel agencies and aggregators – to prohibit use by unauthorized, third-party personal AI agents or assistants. This work includes updates to our booking, ticketing and distribution policies.”

It pointed out that corporate leaders in the banking and retail industries have taken similar actions regarding AI agents, and said, “we encourage others to consider measures that preserve the data and security of their customers and strengthen safety.”

The airline listed a variety of problems with bots that it is trying to avoid, including the risks associated with customers sharing account credentials “with personal, third-party, AI assistants [that] can expose sensitive information, and actions taken by these tools may result in unintended purchases, account changes, or use of MileagePlus miles.”

It also spoke of regulatory challenges: “These automated AI actions have the potential to violate FAA [United States Federal Aviation Administration] and DOT [US Department of Transportation] regulations,” such as those stating that flight check-in requires human acknowledgment that bags do not contain banned substances like explosives.

However, the airline sent a clear signal to the industry that it was willing to reconsider the ban if there are sufficient changes. “As personal AI assistants evolve, United will continue to evaluate how these tools interact with our services, with a focus on protecting our customers,” the statement said.

Separating the humans from the bots

One of the bigger enterprise concerns about agents is that, because they are using the customer’s credentials, the bot activity is typically indistinguishable from the human customer’s activity. Analysts say that the cleanest way to address that is to simply assign bots their own credentials.

Last month, Walmart got close to that goal, putting in place a program, scheduled to start this month, to try to differentiate bot and human actions.

“Today, when a customer uses an AI agent, it signs in using a customer’s account. This means that all purchases – whether made by the customer or the agent – appear together, without any differentiation,” its announcement said. “Agent Profiles, launching in the next month, will offer a new level of transparency for customers. Customers will be able to authorize each AI agent with a dedicated profile within the customer’s account, so the customers will be able to see the agent’s purchases separately from the rest of their purchases.”

Target, on the other hand, blocked all but a handful of approved agents in recent changes to its terms and conditions, granting access only to Target’s AI Shopping Assistant, OAI, Google and Microsoft, although it said it may ”add, remove, or otherwise modify the list of Approved Agents at any time and in its sole discretion.”

Any other agentic commerce tools, it said, “are unauthorized, expressly prohibited, and may not be used to access, log into, scrape, query, or otherwise interact with or gather data from the Site under any circumstances, whether directly or through API call(s), automated use of user credentials, or other means” and approved agents may not be used in combination with unauthorized ones unless explicitly approved by Target, in writing.

Reducing risk

Although analysts and consultants agreed that they expect many more enterprises to block external bot access, their opinions were mixed on whether these blocks would meaningfully dilute the value of autonomous agents, especially those making purchases, ordering plane tickets or performing related concierge functions.

Frank Dickson, principal analyst at Dickson Research, said, “blocking does not destroy the value of agents. It moves it. Every wall eventually gets a gate. The gate charges admission.”

He pointed out that United’s own wording points there: it prohibits unauthorized agents, which leaves room for authorized ones. “Expect agent access to come back through channels the enterprise controls, on the enterprise’s terms,” he said. “Whoever owns the agent owns the customer relationship. Airlines have spent years pulling customers back from third-party travel sites. They are not going to hand that relationship to someone else’s chatbot.”

He added that enterprises are just trying to reduce risk.

“Enterprises do not fear bots. They fear liability that nobody has assigned,” Dickson said. “Once a rule says which steps a human must perform, which steps an agent may perform, and how each is recorded, a general counsel can sign off on the deployment. Ambiguity is what keeps bots stuck in pilot.”

He noted that the complexity of having an unlimited number of different agents visiting is too risky. 

“A sea of agents is a sea of requests. Somebody pays for every one,” he said. “Every new agent arrives with its own way of logging in, its own idea of what the customer approved, and its own record of what it did, if it keeps one at all. An airline cannot build a separate door for each of them. Nobody should expect it to. Saying no until the market settles down is a reasonable risk decision. Bots that check prices over and over do not buy more seats.”

Noah Kenney, principal consultant at Digital 520, added that there’s no downside to United’s ban. 

“United is in a position where there is substantial risk, an uncertain commercial upside, and almost no competitive pressure to accept either,” he said. “In that type of position, they are able to take the approach of waiting for the legal consequences of bot behavior to become more predictable before they allow it.”

Limits needed

Kenney said one of his biggest concerns is the lack of effective limits on what a bot can do.

“One of the biggest mistakes I see in enterprise AI deployments is giving agents access to far more information and systems than their responsibilities actually require,” Kenney said. “There is a fundamental difference between an agent that is instructed to access only one system and an agent that is technically incapable of accessing anything else. We shouldn’t be giving agents broad capabilities and hoping they exercise restraint.”

Because of this, Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence, said he expects more companies to impose restrictions on bots while they establish controls on their use, noting, “widespread blocking would reduce agents’ value by preventing them from completing tasks across services.”

He added that customer training in bot realities could also be quite helpful.

“People need to understand that actions they authorize through an agent can still create obligations for them, even when they never personally click ‘buy,’ ‘send’ or ‘confirm,’” Greis said. “I expect a substantial cultural shift here: just as people may say things online they would never say face to face, agents could create a similar distance between someone’s choices and their sense of responsibility.”

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Wider use of AI within organizations will lead to more jobs being created than are lost by 2030, according to Gartner.  

Around 10.6 million jobs will be added globally (excluding China and India) by the end of the decade, with 8.9 million lost, according to a Gartner report — a net increase of 1.7 million jobs. At most, around 1.8% of the workforce will experience job losses attributable to AI during this time period, Gartner predicts.

At the same time, a total of 5 million jobs will cumulatively be deferred during this period. This refers to jobs that “would otherwise have been created, but where AI is used as an excuse to restrain hiring,” according to Gartner’s report. Gartner considers deferred jobs as separate from jobs lost.

“Job deferrals were the first effect felt from AI,” said John Lovelock, Gartner distinguished VP analyst and chief forecaster, with “companies holding off hiring open positions until the effects of AI projects were known.”

A recent KPMG survey of 400 US CEOs showed that 89% expect to increase headcount over the next three years, which KPMG US CEO Tim Walsh linked to AI adoption in an Axios interview last month.

For now, though, job losses attributed to AI outpace those created, according to Gartner’s study. During 2026, there were 2.2 million jobs lost due to AI, and 1.6 million gained.  

Lovelock expects the situation will change in the coming years, however, as organizations see greater success with AI deployments. “This will reverse once AI is through the Trough of Disillusionment,” he said, in reference to Gartner’s Hype Cycle framework.

Gartner

The number of jobs deferred is also forecast to fall in the coming years. During 2026, 1.3 million people experienced a delay in hiring, down from 2.1m last year, according to Gartner’s forecast, with 400,000 jobs forecast to be deferred during 2030.

The impact of AI will vary across sectors, with the technology industry expected to see the largest net job gains compared to other areas, such as public sector and asset-intensive industries. Gartner predicts the creation of 1.9 million new technology jobs by 2030, with 400,000 lost.

Services sector jobs — such as in financial services — are forecast to see a similar level of job creation, alongside large numbers of losses.

A similar Gartner report in 2025 predicted that more services jobs would be lost than created, but the analyst firm now forecasts a net increase as demand grows for data- and system-oriented skills. “This industry is most able to improve productivity of employees and increase employment,” said Lovelock.  

The Gartner report doesn’t specifiy which job roles will benefit from greater adoption of AI, though the analyst firm expects some portion of newly created jobs will be “directly linked to the implementation, maintenance and scaling of AI.”

Government jobs are expected to see the largest net job loss of any industry, said Lovelock. “Without the incentive of revenue growth or industry transformation, governments are expected to focus on the AI benefits of efficiencies and staff reduction,” he said.

Entry-level positions are expected to be the hardest hit by job deferrals, said Lovelock. “We do see many of the deferred positions being hired after a 12- to 24-month delay,” he said.

“Unfortunately, some deferred positions do transition into job loss. In most industries and positions, the employee experience pyramid will skew toward senior positions.”

In a separate report from September, Gartner forecast that 30% of positions eliminated by AI-related layoffs will be refilled by 2029, on average. For enterprise-sized organizations, the figure is likely to be higher, at around 40%.

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Tech jobs grew in October, and the holiday season will provide a boost in an otherwise “low-hire, low-fire” market, data released by research firms showed.

The tech industry added 7,200 jobs, and tech jobs across all industries grew by 26,000 in October, according to CompTIA, which studied numbers released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS said the US added 165,000 jobs overall in October.

Job gains were in tech manufacturing, IT services, and software. IT unemployment was at 2.8%, lower than the national average of 4.1%.

Seasonal hiring to provide a boost

A separate study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas said seasonal jobs from Amazon — which announced plans to hire 300,000 workers — will boost hiring in the technology sector. “Amazon’s 300,000 seasonal hires account for nearly all of the 300,252 Technology hiring plans announced in October,” the research firm said.

Amazon’s seasonal jobs will largely be in warehousing and e-commerce fulfillment. The research firm considers them tech jobs, as the company is in the tech sector.

The hiring is largely short-term, seasonal work, and “companies want the flexibility to meet holiday demand without adding permanent headcount,” Challenger said.

Warehouse associate postings are up 13% from a year ago and have grown for three straight months as employers gear up for the seasonal rush, said Ger Doyle, regional president for North America at ManpowerGroup, a staffing and recruitment agency.

“Despite that growth, warehouse postings year-to-date are still running slightly behind 2025’s pace, pointing to a recovery in demand rather than a new high,” Doyle said.

Growth in jobs — for some

The latest numbers reflect a strong labor market, which is encouraging, Doyle said. But gains are still concentrated in areas such as engineering, manufacturing, and logistics, specifically related to data centers, semiconductors, and infrastructure, he said.

“For workers, job openings aren’t necessarily translating into hiring, and the jobs that are growing aren’t always where the people looking for work are,” Doyle said.

Even though demand is starting to improve, it still isn’t easy for people to find work or feel better off, Doyle said.

“What we’re watching now is whether this improvement turns into faster, broader hiring and wages start to regain ground against inflation,” Doyle said.

Tech job cuts in October totaled 5,576, which is the lowest of the year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Even so, the sector leads all industries with 171,501 cuts through October, up 21% from the 141,159 announced in the same period last year,” Challenger said. The technology sector accounts for 28% of job cuts in 2026, the firm said.

A hefty job reduction may be looming, with Microsoft offering voluntary exits to 60,000 employees. Challenger will record those numbers depending on the number of employees accepting the offers or Microsoft’s target.

What job listings say

Despite what research firms called a slow hiring environment, the number of new IT job listings reached 290,892 in October, up 22.2% from a year ago, according to CompTIA.

Job listings for AI skills across sectors reached 366,322 in October, growing by 6.2% from September.

According to the Indeed hiring tracker, AI appeared in 7.3% of its job listings on September 30, doubling from the same day last year.

Job postings tied to data centers are up 52% year-over-year, while semiconductor demand is up 92%, said Kye Mitchell, president of Experis North America, which is owned by ManpowerGroup.

More than half of data center operators are struggling to find qualified workers, which may include engineers, technical workers, and IT talent, Mitchell said.

But hiring may change after US voters nationwide voted to slow down data center development during the November midterm election. Data center projects could face more scrutiny around energy, infrastructure costs, and location at a time when employers are already competing for specialized talent, Mitchell said.

“If a project moves to another market, you can’t assume the workers will move with it. You can move capital, but moving an entire skilled workforce is much harder,” Mitchell said.

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