Estonia Plans First AI Agent ID Codes For Digital Government

Estonia plans to become the first country to create official digital identities for AI agents, setting up a system where autonomous software can act on behalf of people, companies or organizations with defined limits. Prime Minister Kristen Michal backed the proposal after the Eesti-ai advisory board’s second meeting, with the government moving forward on digital identities for AI agents, also described as AI ID codes. The goal is to make agent activity verifiable and auditable before autonomous systems become common inside public services, business workflows and financial tasks. The core issue is delegation. An AI agent may soon compile reports, prepare declarations, interact with registries, draft documents or initiate payments for a person or company. Estonia wants those actions tied to a clear identity, a clear owner, defined rights and an audit trail, rather than forcing users to give AI assistants broad access to all services, data and permissions. The government’s examples show how narrow those powers could become. An AI agent may be allowed only to view data, prepare a document, draw up a payment, or act within a specific financial limit. That makes the ID-code model closer to controlled digital authority than a generic login for bots.