NotYourAIDad Weekly · Issue #002 · October 25, 2026
Issue #002 · Written October 25, 2026. Tools, prices and links may have changed since.
Banks are drawing a line on AI agents. Here's where to draw yours.
The one thing worth your time this week
The AI question changed this week.
It's not "which tool?" anymore. It's "what is it allowed to touch?"
CBS News, following an Axios report, says major U.S. banks are detecting third-party AI agents working inside customers' online accounts. Mostly because people handed their AI their username and password. (CBS News)
Even White House AI czar David Sacks, who defended those user-authorized agents (Grok Bot, which I use, was on his list), drew a line: "Full write access (with user credentials) is a different risk category and should be approached carefully." His suggestion for banks was read-only access. Same piece.
Small businesses have the same problem, just quieter. A Pax8 survey of AI-using small and mid-size businesses found 35% discovered AI tools, workflows or agents running without approval in the past six months. (Pax8) Pax8 sells AI and cloud tools to those businesses, so… grain of salt.
You probably clicked "Allow" on a few things this year. This week's lesson is finding out what you said yes to.
3 tools or updates
I saw these three this week. I haven't tried them. Here's what they claim… and the catch.
1. Gemini's small-business hub
What it is: A business page inside the Gemini app with a saved brand style, a finance helper for messy spreadsheets and receipts, and new connections to apps like Shopify, Xero, Canva and Google Business Profile.
Who it's for: The owner who makes their own flyers and does the books on Sunday night.
The catch: "Connect Xero" means Gemini can see your financial data. Decide what you'd connect before you click Allow. Google says it's rolling out "in the coming days," so you may not see it yet.
Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/new-tools-small-business-owners/
2. Canva Craft
What it is: Canva's own image generator for flyers, posters and ads, built to get the words in the image right. Canva says it's available to all Canva users from the Dream Lab panel.
Who it's for: Anyone whose AI flyers keep coming back with a phone number in gibberish.
The catch: Canva's post doesn't say how many images a free account gets. And it learned from Canva's own templates, so expect it to look like Canva.
3. Umbra Mail
What it is: A free, open-source add-on that makes Gmail calmer. New mail arrives a few times a day, newsletters fold into one page, and the AI features stay off until you turn them on.
Who it's for: Anyone whose inbox runs their day.
The catch: Gmail in a browser only, no phone app. It's a small one-person project, and anything that reads your whole inbox deserves a look before it goes on a work account.
Source: https://umbra.masn.studio
Notice the theme? The best of the three starts with the AI turned off.
The NotYourAIDad Lesson: the "what can it touch" check
By the end of this you'll know which AI tools can read your stuff, which can change it, and which shouldn't have either. About ten minutes the first time.
1. Make the list. Open the settings in every AI tool you use (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, any browser add-on). Find the list of connected apps, whatever that tool calls it. Write down each connection: tool, app, what it says it can do.
2. Add the password hand-offs. Any AI or automation you gave a username and password to. Those are the ones the banks are worried about.
3. Sort it. Paste your list (never the passwords themselves) into the AI you trust most:
Here's a list of AI tools and the apps I've connected them to.
Sort each connection into one of three buckets:
READ (it can only see things), WRITE (it can change, send, post or delete),
or SPEND (it can move money or buy things).
For each WRITE or SPEND item, tell me what could go wrong in one plain
sentence, and whether read-only would still do the job I use it for.
Don't guess: if my note doesn't say what access it has, mark it UNKNOWN.
4. Downgrade or disconnect. Anything marked UNKNOWN, anything you don't remember setting up, and any WRITE or SPEND you don't use weekly: disconnect it, or switch it to read-only if the tool lets you. Change any password you typed into an AI.
5. Name an owner. One person (probably you) checks this list once a month. Put it on the calendar.
How you know it worked: you can say, for every AI connection you have, what it can see and what it can change.
When not to use this: at a company with an IT team. Send them your list instead of disconnecting things yourself.
What everyone's getting wrong: the hype check
The hype: "Our AI is ranked near the top" and "90% cheaper."
The news: Canva says Craft makes Canva Research "the world's second most advanced AI lab for image generation," based on DesignArena, a crowdsourced design leaderboard. Same post: the model itself debuted fourth. (Canva)
Notion says its new Auto model picker delivered similar results to top models "at about 90% lower average cost," across 20+ common use cases it chose. That comes with a new credit system, and the dashboard that shows your usage is "soon." (Notion)
My take: Neither claim is a lie. Both are a company grading its own homework.
A leaderboard tells you how it did on someone else's prompts. Not your flyer. "90% cheaper" is their tasks, not yours.
Your move: run the tool on three real jobs from your week. Write down what you'd have had to fix. When the billing is credits, watch your actual usage for a month before you trust anybody's math, including theirs.
One repo worth a look: DigUp
I saw this on GitHub. Haven't run it.
What it does: A free app that searches your own files by what's in them. Type "photo of the torn shingles" or "the pet clause in the lease" and it finds the photo, PDF, Word file or recording. Everything runs on your computer.
Who'd use it: Anyone with years of job photos and scanned paperwork and no idea what the files are named.
The catch: Mac only for now (Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or later); Windows and Linux are beta. It's about two weeks old. The README says it only reads files and never changes or uploads them. Fits this week's theme: point it at one test folder first, not your whole drive.
https://github.com/ARahim3/DigUp
Sign-off
AI that can see your stuff is useful.
AI that can change your stuff needs a manager. That's you.
Hit reply and tell me what you disconnected this week.
Try this, or don't… I'm NotYourAIDad.
Not financial, legal, or investment advice. Tools mentioned aren't sponsors.