The Rise of Consumer Agents: AI’s New Frontier in Commerce and Customer Trust

A Ping Identity survey found that 68% of consumers now use AI, up from 41% a year earlier, yet only 17% fully trust organizations to manage their identity data responsibly. The rise of AI-powered consumer agents that automate shopping and other tasks requires brands to redesign authentication, consent, and risk controls to support delegated authority, according to Ping Identity.

For years, brands have focused on making digital experiences easier for people to navigate. Now they also need to design experiences for software acting on people’s behalf. AI-powered consumer agents are moving beyond chatbots and search assistants. They’re beginning to research products, compare prices, schedule appointments, complete purchases, and manage subscriptions with minimal user involvement. Consumers remain in control of the outcome, but many of the steps between intent and action are becoming automated. Recent data https://www.pingidentity.com/en/lp/2025-consumer-survey.html found that 68% of consumers now use AI in some capacity, up from 41% just one year earlier. That growth suggests more than rising AI use. It points to growing consumer comfort with delegating routine digital tasks to intelligent systems, which is changing expectations for how people interact with brands online. For organizations, that raises a practical question: how do you establish trust with software that’s acting on behalf of a customer while still protecting the customer behind it? The Customer Is Still the Customer, But the Journey Has Changed Most digital experiences today assume a human is clicking every button, reviewing each page, and making all the decisions. Consumer agents challenge those assumptions. Rather than opening multiple browser tabs to compare products, an agent may evaluate dozens of retailers in seconds. Instead of manually filling out forms or logging into multiple accounts, it may retrieve verified information, complete authentication steps, and finish a transaction automatically. Organizations, therefore, need to think beyond optimizing websites or mobile apps. They need to ensure their services, APIs, authentication flows, and consent models can support trusted interactions initiated by authorized AI agents. That doesn’t eliminate the importance of customer experience. It changes where experience is delivered. Increasingly, trust, transparency, and reliability will determine whether an agent selects one business over another. Trust Can’t Be Assumed Consumer adoption of AI has grown faster than confidence in how organizations handle identity data. Fewer than one in five https://www.pingidentity.com/en/lp/2025-consumer-survey.html 17% consumers fully trust organizations to manage their identity information responsibly. That’s a significant gap at a time when AI systems are expected to access increasingly sensitive personal data to perform useful tasks. Consumers will reasonably ask what information their AI agent is allowed to access, how long that permission lasts, whether they can revoke it immediately, and how they can be sure an organization is interacting with their authorized agent rather than an imposter. These aren’t hypothetical concerns. They’re fundamental requirements for AI-enabled commerce. Organizations that can answer those questions clearly will make it easier for consumers to adopt agent-driven experiences with confidence. Identity Becomes the Foundation for Agent-Driven Commerce Traditional customer identity and access management CIAM has focused on authenticating individual users. Consumer agents introduce a different challenge: not just verifying the customer, but recognizing when software is acting on their behalf and what it has been authorized to do. In many cases, these agents rely on short-lived or ephemeral identities rather than long-lived credentials. Organizations therefore need mechanisms to detect agent activity, establish the relationship between the consumer and the agent, verify delegated authority, enforce least-privilege access, and continuously evaluate risk throughout an interaction. Consent must become more granular as well, allowing consumers to specify exactly what actions an agent can perform and under what conditions. Static, one-time consent agreements won’t be sufficient when AI agents may carry out dozens of actions over extended periods. Modern identity systems will increasingly need to support dynamic consent, fine-grained authorization, continuous verification, and strong logging and audit trails so organizations can understand what agents are doing on a consumer’s behalf without creating unnecessary friction for legitimate users. Discovery Changes When AI Makes Recommendations Consumer agents may also reshape how organizations think about digital discovery. Today, brands invest heavily in websites, advertising, search rankings, and user experience. Those investments still matter, but AI agents may evaluate businesses using criteria customers never directly see. This includes reliability of APIs, data quality, identity assurance, transparent policies, verified product information, clear pricing, and consistent fulfillment. These characteristics make it easier for AI systems to confidently recommend or transact with an organization on behalf of a customer. In that environment, technical trustworthiness becomes part of customer acquisition. Agent-driven commerce may also reshape the digital funnel itself. In many cases, an agent will handle research, comparison, and routine steps, then hand off to the customer for higher-trust actions such as approving a purchase or sharing sensitive information. Each of those handoffs creates a potential drop-off point. Reducing friction across those transitions while preserving consent, visibility, and control will become an important part of conversion in the agentic commerce era. That makes trust and low-friction handoffs a conversion issue, not just a user experience issue. Preparing for the Next Phase of Digital Interaction Consumer agents won’t replace human decision-making, particularly for high-value or emotionally significant purchases. But they are likely to handle an increasing share of routine digital interactions. Organizations don’t need to redesign every customer journey overnight. They do need to begin evaluating whether their identity architecture can support delegated access, transparent consent, and secure interactions between people, AI agents, and digital services. The rapid increase in consumer AI adoption suggests this transition is already well underway. The organizations that prepare their identity strategies now will be better positioned for the next generation of digital experiences, where customer trust will increasingly depend on how well they manage the AI acting on the customer’s behalf.