A new Senate draft bill would establish a list of AI agent software providers that people can use to establish human ownership and securely run agents on social media and other online platforms.

The Artificial Intelligence Access, Gatekeeper Exchange, and Nondiscriminatory Transfer (AI AGENT) Act, led by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., would allow end users of large online platforms with more than 50 million customers or subscribers per month the right to choose at least one AI agent provider who complies with security and identity standards developed by the Federal Trade Commission.

Such agents are increasingly making decisions on behalf of users, like shopping, posting content on social media,  or changing account settings, sometimes without the user’s consent or knowledge..

Under the bill, the FTC would certify independent bodies to vet AI agent vendors. These certification bodies would ensure products meet baseline protections for privacy, data security and acting in the user’s interest. The bill would also require providers to link each AI agent to its human operator’s identity and to include built-in controls that let users clearly grant or revoke permission for the agent to act on their behalf.

While the commission cannot bar platforms from using AI agent providers that fail to meet those standards, it can deregister violators from the FTC list.

The bill is a discussion draft, and Warner said he was releasing it now to receive feedback before introducing a formal version for consideration in the Senate.

“As agentic AI transforms how Americans interact with technology, consumers deserve a real choice in the marketplace – and AI agents must be accountable to the people they serve,” Warner said in a statement. “This discussion draft is a major step toward building a clear federal framework that promotes innovation, protects consumers, and ensures the United States continues to lead the world in emerging technology.”

Last year, Morgan Stanley estimated that nearly one-in-four (23%) Americans made purchases using AI over a 30-day period, and that agentic shoppers could account for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in online commerce by 2030.

But AI agents can still be unreliable or erratic. They can make absurd purchases that a user would never knowingly approve, leak sensitive data or act contrary to a user’s interest.

As more agents flood the internet, it increases the likelihood of AI bots interacting with and buying from other AI bots – underscoring the need for safe or regulated user solutions that can verify accountable human identities behind AI activity and provide baseline security and privacy protections.

The Trump administration is trying to find its own baseline for regulating frontier models. Earlier this month the Department of Commerce placed export controls on Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models, and the two parties are attempting to negotiate a framework to provide government oversight of newer releases.

An AI executive order released by the Trump administration set up a voluntary 30-day testing program for AI companies to submit certain frontier models for testing and evaluation, but the administration imposed the export controls days after Anthropic released Fable 5 publicly, reportedly citing concerns that the model could be jailbroken.

Anthropic claims that extensive internal testing has identified no universal jailbreaks for Fable 5 and that third-party research released thus far hasn’t shown that their guardrails preventing access to the model’s enhanced cybersecurity or biological capabilities have been circumvented. Those are the capabilities that Anthropic cited when it held back its newest model, Mythos, from public release.