Colleges are facing a new competitor in classroom instruction: commercial AI chatbots and vendor‑built teaching agents. Faculty report students increasingly rely on general chatbots for research and writing, prompting some instructors to redesign assignments to foreground process and evidence. Instructure’s Canvas announced an AI teaching agent aimed at saving faculty time on administrative tasks while stopping short of full automation of grading. The vendor frames the agent as a way to offload low‑value work, but some educators warn agentic systems risk hollowing out the student‑faculty relationship if not tightly governed. Campus CIOs and instructional designers will need to set guardrails on third‑party AI integrations, address data‑privacy concerns and update procurement and vendor‑risk processes. The balance between productivity gains and preserving pedagogical integrity will shape adoption decisions this academic year.