Five minutes. What happened, and what to do about it. All stories from 20 October 2026
Microsoft extends Project Perception to treat AI agents as insiders, with a permission set up per task and a risk score that changes
Microsoft's design rule for agents: start with no permissions, give each its own identity, and tighten access when its behaviour changes.
Yelp launches Smart Lead Reply at $30 a month, an AI agent that answers customer enquiries and qualifies leads for business owners
TechCrunch reported on 20 October that Yelp is releasing Smart Lead Reply, a paid product that replies to customers and engages with them to qualify a lead. Business owners are charged $30 a month and can specify how the agent should handle a conversation. In the same update, a Check for Me feature on restaurant pages lets a diner enter a party size and phone number, then has a voice agent call the restaurant to ask about the wait and text back the result. Yelp's assistant also gains an OpenTable booking integration and remembers preferences from earlier chats.
- If you take enquiries through Yelp, read a week of your recent leads and write down the three questions customers ask most; those are what any reply agent needs to answer correctly.
- If you run a restaurant, decide who answers when an automated caller asks about waits, and keep your wait-time answer short and consistent so a machine caller gets the same reply a person would.
Source: TechCrunch. This is our short summary of their reporting. The paragraphs marked "Our read" and the things to do are SeedFoundry's opinion. The summary is drafted with AI tools. Image: Yelp, from its own announcement. How we source and credit
These are short summaries of other people's reporting, with our own commentary. Each story names its source and links to the original. How we source and credit