Mark Warner proposes AI agents bill to enforce duty of loyalty

Senator Mark Warner is preparing to release a discussion draft bill that would force AI agents to put users first. The proposal, set for release on June 29, 2026, introduces a “duty of loyalty” principle that would prohibit AI agents from secretly prioritizing the interests of developers, platforms, or advertisers over the people they’re supposed to serve.

What the bill actually does

The core of Warner’s proposal rests on a simple but powerful idea: if an AI agent is acting on your behalf, it should actually act on your behalf. The duty of loyalty requirement would ban undisclosed partnerships between agent developers and service providers. If your AI travel agent books you a more expensive hotel because the hotel chain pays the agent’s developer a referral fee, that would be a problem under this framework.

The bill also includes interoperability provisions that would prevent dominant platforms from blocking third-party AI agents. In practice, this means companies like Amazon or Google couldn’t wall off their ecosystems to lock out competing AI agents while still allowing them to enforce reasonable privacy standards.

The draft also includes privacy protections for users, though the specific mechanisms haven’t been detailed yet.

Why Warner is pushing this now

This isn’t Warner coming out of nowhere. The Virginia Democrat has been building toward this moment through several related legislative efforts. He reintroduced the ACCESS Act, which would let users designate their own agents on social platforms. He’s also pushed the Treasury Department to establish rules governing agentic AI in financial services.

During a Senate Finance hearing on June 2, 2026, Warner laid out the case for why this matters. He flagged two specific risks. First, agents that steer consumers toward partnered services in exchange for hidden commissions. Second, platforms that restrict access to external agents specifically to protect their advertising business models.

The timing tracks with the explosive growth of AI-driven commerce. AI-driven retail traffic saw an 805% year-on-year increase by Black Friday 2025. The global market for AI agents is expected to grow from $5.4 billion to $236 billion by 2034.

What this means for investors and the broader market

The interoperability provisions could be particularly disruptive. Large platforms have historically used closed ecosystems as competitive moats. If third-party AI agents gain guaranteed access to major platforms, it could lower barriers to entry and create space for smaller, more specialized AI agent companies to compete.

For crypto-focused investors specifically, there’s a notable absence worth flagging. Coverage of the bill contains zero references to cryptocurrencies, tokens, or digital assets. This legislation appears squarely aimed at consumer protection in AI-driven commerce, not at the intersection of AI and blockchain.

Bipartisan support remains unclear, and details regarding the bill are scarce. Investors should watch for committee markup schedules and any co-sponsors from across the aisle as the clearest signals of whether this draft has real momentum.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.