Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

7-2026

Abstract

AI coding assistants and autonomous agents are becoming integral to software development workflows, reshaping how code is produced, reviewed, and maintained. While recent research has focused mainly on the capabilities and impacts of productivity of these systems, much less attention has been paid to accountability: who is responsible when agents generate, modify, or recommend code? In practice, accountability is defined through the Terms of Service (ToS) and related policy documents that govern the use of AI-powered development tools.In this vision paper, we present a comparative analysis of the Terms of Service for widely used AI coding assistants and agent-enabled development tools. We examine how these documents allocate ownership, responsibility, liability, and disclosure obligations between tool providers and software developers, and we identify common patterns and divergences between providers. Our analysis reveals a consistent tendency to shift responsibility for correctness, safety, and legal compliance onto users, as well as substantial variation in how providers address issues such as indemnification, data reuse, and acceptable use.Based on these findings, we argue that existing policy frameworks are poorly aligned with increasingly agent-mediated and autonomous software development workflows. We outline a research roadmap for accountable agents in software engineering, identifying challenges and opportunities for modeling responsibility, designing governance artifacts, developing tooling that supports accountability, and conducting empirical studies of developers’ perceptions and practices.

Keywords

accountability, AI coding assistants, autonomous agents, governance, intellectual property, liability, terms of service

Discipline

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Intelligent Systems and Optimization

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

AIware '26: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on AI-Powered Software, Montreal, Canada, July 6-7

First Page

31

Last Page

37

ISBN

9798400726019

Identifier

10.1145/3805760.3814889

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

New York

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3805760.3814889

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