It just dawned on me: account management in e-commerce platforms needs to be completely reimagined to support our AI agents.
Right now, account permissions are designed for people. The platform assumes you’re logging in yourself—or maybe that you’re sharing credentials with a spouse, a coworker, or a team. The permission model is binary: you either have the keys to the kingdom, or you don’t.
But what happens when it’s not you logging in, but an AI working on your behalf?
The First Step: Read-Only Access for AI Agents
Let’s start with the basics. I want to be able to give my AI agent read-only access to my account.
That could mean:
- Checking my order status so I don’t have to dig through emails
- Looking up past purchase history to remember what size I bought last time
- Viewing personalized pricing or offers without being able to actually buy anything
This sounds simple, but it’s a big shift from today’s “all or nothing” credentials.
Beyond Shopping: AI as a Subscriber
For some sites, I don’t even need my AI to shop—I just want it to access what I’ve already paid for.
Take my America’s Test Kitchen membership. I love their human-driven product reviews—deep, professional, and credible. Right now, I log in myself and browse for recommendations. But imagine I’m shopping for a new food processor. I want my AI agent to:
- Access my membership
- Read the latest review roundup
- Recommend the best option for my needs
America’s Test Kitchen still gets my subscription revenue, but my agent does the work.
A Cascade of New Use Cases
This shift unlocks a flood of possibilities:
- An AI travel assistant checking loyalty balances and upgrade offers
- An AI home maintenance bot tracking past appliance purchases for warranty claims
- A health and fitness AI that reviews my supplement orders to adjust my meal plan
Every one of these requires granular permissions—because I’m not ready to hand over the “buy now” button without limits.
The Double Bonus: Parental Controls
If we get this right, there’s another win: parental controls.
The same permission layers that protect me from rogue AI spending can protect kids from accidental (or intentional) purchases—while still letting them access the content or tools they need.
The Big Shift Ahead
We’ve been here before. When mobile apps arrived, we had to rethink authentication and permissions. When APIs took off, we created OAuth scopes. Now, AI agents are pushing us into another identity and access management evolution.
The companies that solve this first will have a competitive edge—not just in security, but in customer trust.
Because in the era of AI-powered commerce, “who’s logged in” won’t always be a human. And that changes everything.
Now, back to picking out a new food processor for my giant chimichurri recipes.
