AI agents are beginning to do more than recommend products. Increasingly, they can search for products, compare prices, and complete purchases on a consumer’s behalf—a model often called “agentic commerce.” For companies offering subscriptions and other automatically renewing products, this raises new issues when AI agents, rather than consumers, sign up for the subscription.

Existing automatic renewal laws assume that a consumer will interact directly with a merchant’s website or app, review the renewal disclosures, and agree to the renewal terms. Agentic commerce, by contrast, involves AI agents acting on a consumer’s behalf to search for, evaluate, and purchase goods or services, often without a human ever seeing those terms. For example: a consumer could instruct an agent to “find a streaming service with live sports for under $20 a month and sign me up.’”

Payment networks and technology companies are already building infrastructure for these transactions and have developed tools that allow consumers to authorize agents to make purchases within set parameters, such as spending limits and authorization rules.

These tools are designed in part to help merchants confirm that an AI agent has authority to make a purchase.

Automatic Renewal Laws Meet Agentic Commerce

The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) governs online transactions involving negative option features, including many automatically renewing subscriptions. ROSCA prohibits a company from charging a consumer through a negative option feature unless the company clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms before obtaining the consumer’s billing information, obtains the consumer’s “express informed consent” before charging the consumer, and provides a simple mechanism for the consumer to stop recurring charges.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to actively enforce these requirements. As we recently discussed, earlier this year the FTC sued JustAnswer, alleging that consumers who believed they were paying a small fee for an expert answer were instead enrolled in a more expensive monthly subscription without their express informed consent.

Many states have their own automatic renewal laws, which may be enforced by state attorneys general (AGs) and, in some jurisdictions, through private litigation. California regulators have been particularly active in this area, including through the California Automatic Renewal Taskforce (CART).

None of these laws, however, squarely addresses what happens when an AI agent sits between the consumer and the merchant.

AI Agent Authorization and Subscription Consent

For example, if a consumer tells an AI agent to “find me the cheapest meal-delivery service and sign me up,” and the agent selects an introductory offer that automatically renews at a higher monthly price, has the merchant obtained the consumer’s express informed consent to those recurring charges? Authorization to make a one-time payment is not necessarily the same thing as consent to future recurring payments.

Agentic commerce also raises questions about what it means to provide a “clear and conspicuous” disclosure. Today, companies spend considerable time evaluating the font size, color, and location of automatic renewal disclosures, including their proximity to price claims and to the button that completes the transaction. Those factors assume a human consumer is looking at a webpage, and we routinely use consumer perception survey data to analyze the net impression of the website.

Subscription Disclosures for AI Agents

An AI agent, however, might instead receive structured information through an API or other machine-readable interface, where completeness could matter more than visual presentation. This could eventually produce two parallel disclosure systems: one designed for consumers and one designed to be reliably interpreted by AI agents. For now, companies should be cautious about assuming that providing subscription terms to an AI agent satisfies their obligation to disclose those terms to the consumer.

Agentic transactions may also make it more important to keep records showing the scope of the consumer’s authorization, such as whether an agent was authorized to make only a one-time purchase, enroll in a subscription, or agree to recurring charges up to a specified amount.

AI Agents and Subscription Cancellation Requirements

Cancellation presents an additional risk. Consumers may increasingly instruct AI agents to manage subscriptions: “Cancel everything I haven’t used in three months,” or “Cancel my gym membership before it renews.”

ROSCA and many state automatic renewal laws require a simple cancellation mechanism. Companies will need processes to prevent unauthorized account changes, but refusing an agent’s cancellation request or requiring the consumer to complete additional steps after authorizing an agent to cancel could create tension with these requirements.

Subscription Businesses Should Prepare for Agentic Transactions

Although no law yet specifically addresses AI agents enrolling consumers in subscriptions, companies should expect regulators to apply existing principles.

Companies accepting purchases through AI agents should consider what records demonstrate the scope of the consumer’s authorization and whether material subscription terms can be communicated both to the agent and, where appropriate, directly to the consumer.

As agentic commerce develops, the FTC, CART, state AGs, and courts may eventually have to confront who actually consented when an AI agent clicks “subscribe.” This is likely to become a pivotal question in future cases.  

To learn more, you can watch to our recent discussion on these topics. Venable’s Autorenewal Solutions Team (VAST) continues to monitor developments involving ROSCA, state automatic renewal laws, negative option marketing, and emerging technologies affecting subscription programs.

For more insights into advertising law, bookmark the All About Advertising Law blog and subscribe to our monthly newsletter. To learn more about Venable’s Advertising Law services, click here. And listen to the Ad Law Tool Kit Show—a podcast from Venable.

Mark your calendars! Venable’s 13th Advertising Law Symposium will take place on March 18, 2027, in Washington, DC.

As we begin planning this year’s program, we want to hear from you. The advertising and marketing landscape continues to evolve, and we want to make sure the symposium addresses the issues, trends, and challenges that matter most to you and your business.

Continue Reading Save the Date: Venable’s 13th Advertising Law Symposium

Last month, a federal court in California denied Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s motion to dismiss a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit challenging several aspects of their ticketing practices, including their display of mandatory fees.

The FTC, joined by seven states, alleges that Ticketmaster advertised ticket prices that excluded mandatory fees, which were disclosed later in the purchase process and could raise the total cost by as much as 44%. The court concluded that the FTC plausibly alleged deception under Section 5 even though consumers saw the total price before completing their purchases. The lawsuit also includes claims concerning Ticketmaster’s alleged circumvention of ticket purchase limits and its dealings with ticket brokers, including claims under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act. The court allowed those claims to proceed as well.

Continue Reading Court Allows FTC Drip Pricing Lawsuit Against Ticketmaster to Proceed

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Washington state attorney general announced a settlement under which Amway Corporation, a multilevel marketing (MLM) company, and affiliated recruiting companies World Wide Group, LLC and Leadership Team Development, Inc., will pay $225 million in consumer redress—the largest monetary relief obtained by the FTC in an MLM case to date.

The case highlights the FTC’s continued focus on alleged deception involving money-making opportunities as well as its partnership with states to obtain monetary relief that the FTC could not otherwise obtain on its own. The injunctive relief serves as notice of what the FTC expects of other MLM companies. 

Continue Reading $225 Million Amway Settlement Targets MLM Earnings and Recruiting Claims

Sometimes advertising is like real estate, where the three most important things are: location, location, location. In advertising, it is often: context, context, context. And never more so than with puffery.

Two recent National Advertising Division (NAD) decisions provide a useful reminder that what an advertiser puts around superlative claims—that is, the context—is key to determining whether the claims are mere puffery or require substantiation. In advertising law, puffery generally refers to exaggerated or subjective claims that consumers would not reasonably understand as objectively provable.

The two decisions also show how easily context can change the meaning of a claim. Ratings, reviews, or measurable product attributes can turn what looks like harmless boasting on its own into a claim that requires substantiation.

Continue Reading NAD Puffery Decisions Show Why Advertising Context Matters

Companies may spend significant time and resources carefully drafting their online terms and conditions, but those terms will not do much good if consumers are not adequately put on notice of them. A recent Ninth Circuit decision provides another reminder that courts will look closely not only at what an online disclosure says but also at how and where it appears.

In Schlueter-Beckner v. SimpliSafe, Inc., consumers filed a putative class action relating to their purchases of SimpliSafe home security systems and monitoring services. SimpliSafe moved to compel arbitration based on its online Terms of Sale and Terms of Service. Consumers encountered those terms at two different points—when purchasing the hardware and when later enrolling in a trial of SimpliSafe’s alarm-monitoring services.

Continue Reading Online Terms and Conditions: Why Presentation Matters

California has joined New York in regulating the use of AI-generated human performers in advertising. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1050, which requires advertisers to clearly and conspicuously disclose when an advertisement prominently features a “synthetic performer.”

The law applies broadly to audio, video, audiovisual, and digital advertisements disseminated through virtually any medium, including online platforms, where the communication is intended or reasonably expected to induce the purchase of goods or services.

Continue Reading California Enacts AI Advertising Disclosure Requirement for Synthetic Performers

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) has announced a new program that gives businesses and industry groups a new way to seek guidance about ambiguities in FTC rules.

How the FTC Rule Guidance Program Works

Under the new BCP Rule Guidance Program, interested stakeholders can submit questions identifying a “genuine ambiguity” in an FTC rule, a substantive conflict between an FTC rule and another statute or rule, or another significant issue with a Commission rule. If BCP concludes that the issue warrants guidance, staff may issue a response that will be made publicly available.

This could be a useful development for businesses confronting FTC rules that leave important compliance questions unanswered. Rather than waiting for an enforcement action to learn how staff interprets an ambiguous provision, businesses and industry groups now have a mechanism for putting the issue directly before BCP.

Continue Reading New FTC Rule Guidance Program Offers Businesses Answers—and Risks

The decision reaches beyond competitor false advertising claims, with potentially significant implications for FDA, FTC, state consumer protection, and other regulatory enforcement.

Executive Summary

The Tenth Circuit’s decision in KetoNatural Pet Foods, Inc. v. Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc. may ultimately be remembered less for what it says about pet food than for what it says about hyperlinks.

For years, many companies operated under an informal assumption—sometimes referred to as the “two-click rule”—that they could avoid liability for third-party claims so long as those claims appeared on another website that consumers had to navigate to independently. The Tenth Circuit has substantially undermined that assumption. The court held that a company’s own commercial speech may include third-party content that it intentionally incorporates through hyperlinks and curated references when those materials function as part of the company’s promotional message.

Continue Reading Tenth Circuit Rejects the “Two-Click” Safe Harbor: Hyperlinks and Third-Party Content May Create Advertising and Regulatory Liability

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking public comment on a proposed enforcement policy statement regarding personalized pricing—the practice of using individual consumer data to set prices according to how much the consumer appears willing to spend.

Stopping short of prohibiting personalized “surveillance” pricing, the FTC’s draft statement contends that undisclosed price personalization can deceive, mislead, and harm consumers in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Interestingly, the policy statement appears to build on work begun in the Biden administration under then-FTC chair Lina Khan’s leadership. The statement also appears in conflict with the Trump administration’s “anti-regulation” approach. 

Continue Reading FTC Targets Undisclosed Personalized Pricing Practices