Senator Warner Makes a First Foray into Agentic AI Regulation | TechPolicy.PressAnalysis<br>Senator Warner Makes a First Foray into Agentic AI Regulation<br>Ellen P. Goodman / Jul 13, 2026Ellen P. Goodman is a professor at Rutgers Law School and co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.<br>Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
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If recommendation algorithms gave online platforms the ability to control what people see online, agentic AI offers them an opportunity to control what people do. To this pessimistic vision, we can add a sunnier one. Truly independent AI agents may provide a computational counterweight to platform domination by empowering users. Agents working on their behalf can help people bypass dark patterns, find the best deals, and fact-check at scale. To try to move us towards that more pleasant future, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) released a discussion draft on June 29 of the AI AGENT Act, (“Artificial Intelligence Access, Gatekeeper Exchange, and Nondiscriminatory Transfer Act of 2026”).<br>Agentic systems are AI models that do, not just propose. According to common definitions, they “perceive context, set and update goals, plan, and take action through tools or environments.” The AI AGENT Act is the first draft federal law to deal with agentic AI power. The Act is structured as an e-commerce consumer protection intervention, run through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It seeks greater competition and consumer choice in the market for AI agents, while also prohibiting large digital platforms from deploying double agents: AI user assistants that actually work for the platform’s benefit at the user’s expense.<br>Under the Act, for example, an Amazon consumer would be able to designate her own agent on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms to manage purchases on the platform. If instead the consumer chose to use Alexa, Amazon would have to ensure that Alexa acted in the consumer’s interests, not Amazon’s. The Act recognizes that for this to work,<br>agents would bear legally cognizable fiduciary duties to consumers;<br>a consumer’s particular interests would have to be legible to agents;<br>agentic behavior would have to be legible to consumers; and<br>agentic interactions with the platforms and consumers would have to protect privacy and security.<br>These prerequisites are not yet in place, which is probably why this is a discussion draft.<br>The interoperable interface<br>The Act’s provisions concerning agentic access to large platforms essentially enact portability and interoperability requirements for AI agents. The Act would require large online platforms (those with at least 50 million US customers or subscribers) to maintain an “interoperable interface” as a portal for independent agents. Using this portal, consumers would have the right to designate and deploy “custodial user agents” (CUAs) of their choice for use in online interactions, rather than being forced to use the platform’s designate. CUAs are defined as “a software-based agent that is expressly authorized by a user to interact with a large online platform provider on that user’s behalf in a transparent, documented, scope-limited, and revocable manner.” Interactions might include shopping, selecting content and managing engagement, or adjusting account settings.<br>One of the regulatory progenitors to the Act is data portability. When users can port their data from one platform to another, they are less likely to be locked-in to a particular platform and can make a switch, notwithstanding the existence of network effects. Further back in the portability lineage is the concept of number portability for mobile phone users. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required that wireline phone carriers enable customers to port their phone numbers to competing providers, which the FCC subsequently extended to mobile carriers, thus spurring mobile competition. Interoperability takes data exchange a little further by enabling one service, often through an open interface, to interoperate with another. The regulatory precedent here is the Federal Communication Commission’s 1968 Carterfone decision, ruling that monopoly landline telephone companies had to let users attach “interconnecting devices” (like telephones) to the public switched network. These historic interventions made possible consumer choice and competition in telecommunications markets and spurred innovation in ancillary markets (including ultimately the internet).<br>Senator Warner has tried before to apply portability and interoperability principles to concentrated digital markets. In 2019, he introduced the ACCESS Act to require large social media platforms to let users port their data to competing services and run independent services atop their social media feeds (for example, alternative algorithms). At the time, commentators promoted platform access for...