Brands market to humans today, but in the very near future, they could be marketing to a consumer’s AI agent.
That’s the bold take Jason Carmel, a creative technologist at VML/WPP, presented during his talk, “A Humanist Spin on Machine-to-Machine Marketing,” at the 2026 Digital Shelf Summit (DSS).
Carmel, who spends his days experimenting with emerging technologies and then translating them into everyday tools for VML/WPP’s clients, says that as agentic commerce grows, brands will need to develop product content with two distinct audiences in mind: everyday consumers and the machines that engage in commerce on their behalf.
“We're going to have this dance called machine-to-machine, where consumers will have their machines, and us marketing folks, we already have our machines, and they're going to do a lot of the talking,” he says.
Carmel’s contrarian point of view is that this shift won’t make marketing more impersonal or displace humans. It’ll instead make ecommerce transactions even more human-centric.
Here’s Carmel’s humanist spin on agentic commerce and what it could mean for how shoppers and brands interact and transact going forward.
As AI adoption grows, so does consumers’ ambivalence about the technology.
Data Carmel presented during his DSS session indicates most consumers are simultaneously AI optimists and skeptics:
At the same time:
“They're the same people having two diametrically opposing thoughts at the same time,” Carmel says. “That is inherently human. Consumers don't know whether AI is the path to freedom or the chains themselves that are keeping us from being free.”
While consumers grapple with conflicting feelings about AI, agentic commerce is steadily gaining ground: 51% of consumers say they’re comfortable with agentic shopping and 64% already use AI tools to discover and research products.
To better understand how brands and retailers navigate this environment, Carmel says posthumanism offers a potential guidepost.
It’s not often that a speaker turns to contemporary philosophy to futurecast ecommerce, but Carmel says posthumanism provides an effective framework for understanding how humans and technology interact.
“Essentially, posthumanism is the concept that we're no longer in a human-centric world,” he says. “Humans are still there, but now humans are coexisting with these other entities outside of them in a very real and meaningful sense.”
Carmel argues that this is already happening today. Smartphones are the clearest example. They aren’t physically attached to people, but they’ve essentially become a digital appendage. Most people can’t go even an hour without touching their device. We use our phone for everything from casual entertainment to important household tasks.
More broadly, dating apps determine who we meet. Social media algorithms determine what content we see. Fashion subscription services shape how we dress. From this perspective, humans don’t exist outside technology. It’s deeply integrated into our everyday lives.
Carmel argues that how consumers use AI tools has evolved.
When AI engines first emerged, people used them to confirm accepted facts. Now, they’re asking systems for their opinion, using these technologies to shape their preferences and judgment. Forty-nine percent of consumers already trust an agent to recommend products on their behalf, according to research from VML Intelligence.
“These agents are starting to recommend things that are beyond fact,” Carmel says.
So, consumers using AI agents to shop and complete transactions isn’t a huge leap. Traditional commerce requires humans to navigate the shopping journey using links, keywords, and searches, but an agent streamlines this process. Carmel gives the example of a parent using an AI agent to plan their child’s birthday party.
“They're going to buy groups of things that answer problems — ‘I have a birthday party for my kid, so sort it out,’” he says. “‘Why are you asking me if I need candles? Of course, I need candles.’”
Carmel argues that this exchange is more human.
“It becomes this kind of group process, as opposed to individual links that require individual clicking, that require individual purchasing,” he says. “That's how we talk as humans to each other. If I ask you where you want to go to dinner tonight, you don't give me a list of six links. That's just not human. So, I think we're actually getting more and more human in our behavior on this.”
Agentic shopping has huge implications for brands and retailers.
Consumers’ AI agents could replace the standard buyer personas and how brands and retailers approach personalization. Rather than fictional buyer profiles, companies would have to engage agents that represent a real person, their priorities, preferences, purchasing behavior, and intent.
“We no longer have to guess because the agent knows, and as marketers, we have to make peace with this — that the consumers are going to take control of their stuff and stuff it in agents for us to then partner with,” Carmel says.
He adds that “brand” will become even more important, as it’ll be a core differentiator for companies. They’ll need to tell their brand story more engagingly and effectively.
To increase discoverability, brands and retailers will have to create and structure content for both agents and humans.
“The first thing we need to prepare for is content, and by prepare for, I mean create,” Carmel says. “And by create, I mean a lot of it,” adding that experts have estimated companies will need to create five times more content than they do today to keep pace with agentic commerce.
“[That’s] five times as much creative as you are producing now; you will need to keep up with all of these agents that live around your consumers,” he says.
Carmel believes ecommerce roles also will change. We could see roles that merge content and technical talent, such as:
“We as humans, for once, need to prepare our own organizations and make sure that we're setting up our organizations for the best possible outcome for our customers,” Carmel says.
As agentic commerce grows, brands and retailers will no longer have to wonder about consumers’ intent — an agent will know it.
But in a future world flooded with agents, humans must still be in the loop. They’ll lead the charge to engage consumers and their AI stand-ins. They’ll be invaluable for shaping the narratives that differentiate companies and increase their visibility to AI agents.
“Never will your brand be more important, because it's the only thing standing in between these two machine layers to keep the humanity there,” Carmel says.