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Artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving from a tool that assists human decision-making into technology capable of acting independently. The next frontier, often referred to as agentic AI or agentic commerce, envisions AI agents negotiating contracts, making purchases, authorizing payments, and completing commercial transactions with little or no human intervention.
While enormous investments are being made to develop this technology, far less attention has been devoted to an equally important question: What legal infrastructure will govern autonomous commercial transactions? That is the focus of our latest episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor podcast being released today.
Our guests are Bridget McCormack, President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association–International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA) and former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and David Hoffman, the William A. Schnader Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. They are the authors of the thought-provoking paper, Agentic Commerce Needs Legal Infrastructure—and the Courts Are Coming, which is published here on AAA’s website.
During our discussion, Bridget and David explain why the legal system is unprepared for a world in which AI agents, not humans, enter into contracts and conduct transactions at machine speed. Traditional contract law is built around concepts such as human assent, notice, disclosure, authorization, and intent. Those doctrines become much more difficult to apply when the “buyer” or “seller” is an autonomous AI system acting within broad parameters established by its human principal.
We explore a number of important issues, including:
- What distinguishes “agentic commerce” from today’s AI-assisted transactions.
- Why traditional contract formation concepts, including clickwrap agreements, disclosures, and consent, may become increasingly difficult to apply.
- How existing agency law principles, including ratification, could bind companies to contracts negotiated by their AI agents.
- Why autonomous transactions may generate entirely new forms of litigation, including class actions arising from errors replicated across thousands, or even millions, of AI-driven transactions.
- The challenges of proving what an AI agent actually agreed to and the need for reliable records of contract formation.
- The growing importance of arbitration and other dispute resolution mechanisms as commerce increasingly moves to automated and, in some cases, irreversible payment systems such as stablecoins.
- Practical steps companies should consider now before deploying autonomous commercial agents.
The conversation also examines whether courts, legislatures, the American Law Institute, or organizations such as the American Arbitration Association are best positioned to develop the legal framework that agentic commerce will require.
Although much of today’s discussion focuses on commercial transactions generally, the implications for consumer financial services providers are significant. Financial institutions, fintech companies, payment providers, lenders, and other participants in the consumer finance ecosystem are already investing heavily in AI. As autonomous systems begin negotiating and executing transactions on behalf of businesses and consumers, fundamental questions regarding contract formation, liability, dispute resolution, and regulatory compliance will inevitably arise.
One of the central themes of the discussion is that the technology is advancing much faster than the law. As Professor Hoffman observes, courts have historically adapted existing legal doctrines to new technologies one case at a time. Whether that evolutionary process will be sufficient for agentic commerce, or whether more comprehensive legal reforms will be needed, remains an open question.
This episode builds on our earlier May 21, 2026 podcast with Professor Mark Geistfeld discussing the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence. Together, the two programs examine both the tort law and contract law challenges posed by increasingly autonomous AI systems.
If your organization is exploring AI-powered commercial agents, or simply wants to understand where the law is headed, this is an episode you will not want to miss.
Today’s episode is linked here.
Our podcast with Professor Geistfeld is available here on our May 21, 2026 blog.
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