House Bill 11014 Would Make Principals Liable for What Their AI Agents Sign and Buy
Two Camarines Sur lawmakers have filed House Bill No. 11014, the proposed AI Agent Transactions and Accountability Act, which would set rules for transactions carried out by artificial intelligence agents, Tech Pilipinas reported on October 24. The bill was filed by Rep. Migz Villafuerte of the 5th district, who chairs the House Committee on Information and Communications Technology, and Rep. Luigi Villafuerte of the 2nd district, a deputy majority leader.
The measure covers AI agents that negotiate, execute contracts and electronic documents, start transactions, and interact with application programming interfaces and smart contracts on behalf of a person or business that authorised them. Agents would not gain legal personality or ownership rights. Instead, acts an agent performs within its authority would be legally attributed to its principal, who would generally be responsible, with exceptions for credential theft, unauthorised access, fraud and malicious interference by third parties.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) would set up a voluntary registration system and a Digital Authority Credential framework so that third parties can check who stands behind an agent and how far its authority goes, without receiving secret login data. Registration would be mandatory only for narrowly defined high-value or high-risk autonomous transactions. Knowing or willful violations involving fraud would carry fines of ₱200,000 to ₱2 million, six months to six years in prison, or both.
What it means in practice
Businesses are starting to let agents book, pay and order on their behalf, and the bill tries to answer the first question a merchant or bank will ask when something goes wrong: who is responsible? Making the principal liable by default gives counterparties certainty, while the credential system could let banks and platforms verify an agent without collecting passwords or private keys, which the bill says no one can be required to disclose. It adds a commercial layer to a debate that has centred on infrastructure and public services, from the DICT's AI infrastructure masterplan to calls for a coherent national AI policy.
The same lawmakers authored House Bill No. 2827, the proposed Artificial Intelligence Development and Regulation Act, which would create a broader framework with dedicated oversight bodies. HB 11014 has only been filed and has not been enacted.
What to watch: whether the ICT committee schedules hearings, how the DICT would fund and run the credential registry, and whether banks and e-commerce platforms back the liability rules.