Context
Agents have started to buy
Personal agents now search, compare and buy for people. Their traffic grows faster than human traffic, and each company decides alone how to answer it. Each figure and each news item links to its source.
7,851%
Growth in traffic from AI agents and agentic browsers in 2025, year on year.
Traffic benchmark report, March 202617.7 billion
AI agent requests in the second quarter of 2026, 45% more than in the first.
Bot protection report, July 202642%
Better conversion for visits from AI than for other visits on US retail sites in March 2026. A year earlier, they converted 38% worse.
Retail analytics data, April 2026A large social platform launches a personal agent. It opens websites, fills in forms and buys, and it asks the user before it pays. Within two weeks it is the top free app in the US App Store.
Business pressAn online insurance marketplace blocks that agent. It says the agent shows quotes as a bare price list, without the cover limits, the deductibles or the disclosures that each state requires.
“A quote without its context is not a fair comparison. It is a number.”
Insurance pressPAP is announced. It lets a business identify an agent and limit it to what the customer allows. Insurers are among its design partners, and so is the marketplace that blocked the agent.
AnnouncementThe largest bank in the US says that it blocks outside AI agents from its customers' accounts.
“You don't want rogue agents.”
Business pressA listed insurer opens its own systems to personal agents. An agent can get a quote, buy a policy, change the cover and file a claim, for that insurer's policies only.
Insurer's announcement