When An AI Agent Shops, Who Is The Consumer?

Retailers spent two decades learning how to be found by Google, but the next audience might not be a person typing a query; instead, it could be software acting on a person’s behalf. Agentic commerce tools (AI “agents” that browse, compare, and increasingly transact for users) are quickly moving from demonstrations to products. When an agent does the shopping, the person who dispatched it may never see the listing it selects, the webpage it reads, or the source code behind either.

This shift raises interesting questions around branding and trademark law, where liability often turns on whether the public is likely to be confused. This inquiry was built around a human consumer who, for example, sees a storefront, reads product packaging, scans a domain name, or reviews a page of search results.