[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-new-method-lets-ai-agents-actually-forget-what-you-told-them":10,"sections":34},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":29,"feedback":33,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":33,"total_tokens":33},6136,"new-method-lets-ai-agents-actually-forget-what-you-told-them","New Method Lets AI Agents Actually Forget What You Told Them","A new technique called Provenance-Guided Selective Replay lets AI agents delete a memory and everything derived from it, without wiping the whole conversation.","An AI agent that says it forgot something is often lying to itself.\n\nResearchers behind a new paper argue that today's \"forget\" commands in long-running LLM agents are mostly cosmetic. Deleting a plaintext memory record does nothing to the compressed summaries, pending tool plans, and KV cache that already absorbed the information before the delete request arrived. The team tested nine existing unlearning methods across three agent suites and three model families using adversarial probing. Memory deletion left data leakage completely unchanged, and instruction-based forgetting collapsed entirely under probing, leaking on 100% of attempts.\n\nThis matters because agent memory is where privacy promises actually get tested - a user who asks an assistant to delete a preference expects it gone, not lurking in a cache waiting to resurface. The paper's own numbers show how hard that is: even source redaction, a method built specifically for this problem, still acted on a supposedly deleted preference in 80% of episodes.\n\nThe proposed fix, Provenance-Guided Selective Replay, traces exactly where a fact entered an agent's execution and recomputes only what came after it, matching a full memory wipe while reprocessing up to nine times fewer tokens. It's a preprint, not a shipped feature - but it's a useful reminder that \"forget me\" buttons in AI products are, for now, mostly aspirational.","[\"ai\",\"llm-agents\",\"privacy\",\"machine-unlearning\"]","2026-09-07T04:00:00.000Z","2026-09-07T06:59:39.649Z","2026-09-07T06:59:51.574Z","published",null,[],"ai",[24,26,27,28],"llm-agents","privacy","machine-unlearning",[30],{"name":31,"url":32},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2609.04875",0,{"sections":35},[36,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,85,90,95,100],{"name":37,"slug":24,"count":38,"latest_published_at":39},"AI",3411,"2026-09-07T10:06:25.000Z",{"name":41,"slug":42,"count":43,"latest_published_at":44},"Security","security",574,"2026-09-07T07:03:20.000Z",{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":49},"Policy","policy",311,"2026-09-07T05:33:25.000Z",{"name":51,"slug":52,"count":53,"latest_published_at":54},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":56,"slug":57,"count":58,"latest_published_at":59},"Hardware","hardware",152,"2026-09-03T09:26:48.000Z",{"name":61,"slug":62,"count":63,"latest_published_at":64},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",97,"2026-09-04T15:29:18.000Z",{"name":66,"slug":67,"count":68,"latest_published_at":69},"Science","science",96,"2026-09-03T22:30:00.000Z",{"name":71,"slug":72,"count":73,"latest_published_at":74},"Software","software",73,"2026-08-18T07:51:50.000Z",{"name":76,"slug":77,"count":78,"latest_published_at":79},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",69,"2026-08-18T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":81,"slug":82,"count":83,"latest_published_at":84},"Startups","startups",54,"2026-09-04T23:36:14.000Z",{"name":86,"slug":87,"count":88,"latest_published_at":89},"Gaming","gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":91,"slug":92,"count":93,"latest_published_at":94},"General","general",40,"2026-09-07T08:57:14.000Z",{"name":96,"slug":97,"count":98,"latest_published_at":99},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":101,"slug":102,"count":103,"latest_published_at":104},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]