Air Tags are like Tile tags, which I use. They don’t have GPS, and cannot report back their location on a real-time basis.
If you mark an Airtag as ‘missing’, then other iPhones can report the tag location only if the iPhone is within Bluetooth distance of the Airtag. But Tiles do this as well.
The only worrying part is that with the Apple Airtags, probably EVERU iPhone would participate in locating a ‘lost’ tag, whereas with Tile a user must have the App installed on their phone, which is a much smaller universe of possible ‘informants.’
Samsung also has a similar item.
Apple intro’d these (at long last, after many rumors) primarily because the Tile has been such a big hit with iPhone users. Similar thing happened years ago, SanDisk had the Rio player, which was huge in the Mac community of the time, and Stevie intro’d the iPod.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tile-find-lost-keys-phone/id664939913