"Yet "shopping" with tools like OpenAI or Perplexity could wreak havoc on companies that already struggle to distinguish between so-called good and bad bots, warns Experian in its 2026 Fraud Forecast, published today. The No. 1 threat to companies, according to the forecast, is "machine-to-machine mayhem" in which cybercriminals blend good bots doing your shopping with bad bots tasked with fraud."
"The U.S. Federal Trade Commission last year found that consumers lost more than $12.5 billion to fraud, while nearly 60% of companies reported an increase in losses from 2024 to 2025. Strikingly, financial losses ballooned by 25% even as the number of fraud reports held steady at 2.3 million a year, showing that schemes are getting more effective at cheating consumers and companies out of their money."
"The company predicts this year will be a "tipping point" for AI-enabled fraud that will force conversations about liability and regulation around agentic AI in e-commerce, Peters said. "We want to let the good agents through to provide convenience and efficiency but we need to make sure that doesn't accidentally become a shortcut for bad actors," she said."
AI-enabled shopping agents and malicious bots are converging, creating machine-to-machine mayhem that defeats simple bot-blocking strategies. Cybercriminals can blend authorized purchasing agents with fraud-focused bots to carry out transactions while evading detection. Consumers and companies face growing financial harm, with billions lost and corporate losses rising even as report counts remain steady. Business leaders consider AI-enabled fraud and deepfakes among top operational risks, and pressure will increase for liability frameworks and regulation targeting agentic AI in e-commerce. Some platforms already block AI agents to reduce risk, but detection and policy gaps persist.
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