With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the contradictions between AI agent tools and the internet ecosystem have become increasingly evident. To address this challenge, a group of industry leaders including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI jointly announced the establishment of the "AI Agent Foundation" (AAIF) on Tuesday. The foundation aims to collaborate on developing open-source technical standards related to AI agents. This initiative is akin to the standardization efforts undertaken by global banks in cross-bank electronic payments, but this time the focus is on the interoperability of application data.

The AI Agent Foundation is managed by the Linux Foundation, which also oversees the Linux operating system and other open-source projects, ensuring that the development of technical standards is not dominated by a single company. The foundation was established based on three donation projects: Anthropic's MCP protocol, OpenAI's AI agent design blueprint AGENTS.md, and Block's open-source AI agent project Goose. In addition to these three donor organizations, well-known companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare also participated in the founding of the foundation.

In the three founding projects, the most notable one is the MCP protocol released by Anthropic in November of last year. The MCP protocol provides a standardized method for connecting AI models with various data sources and tools, similar to the role of the USB-C protocol in connecting electronic devices. Through this standard, companies using the ChatGPT service can directly connect with tools like Slack, allowing AI chatbots to quickly access group chat data and answer questions such as "Who is responsible for a particular project?"

Although the MCP protocol has received support from numerous well-known tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, many developers have reported security vulnerabilities during its use, requiring additional fixes to prevent hacker attacks. In addition to the MCP protocol, OpenAI's AGENTS.md format provides instructions for agents, while Block's Goose is an open-source AI agent that can run locally without an internet connection.

Key Points:

📌 Global tech giants have jointly established the AI Agent Foundation to develop open-source technical standards.

🔗 The MCP protocol provides a standardized way for AI models to connect, promoting the interoperability of application data.

🔒 The standard still has security issues, and developers need to make additional fixes to prevent risks.