Agents Aren't Humans (But They Kinda Are)
Cloudflare, Thursday, November 5th, 2026
Cloudflare says sites need new ways to identify, trust, and hold accountable users acting through hosted AI agents.
Cloudflare argues that hosted personal AI agents, such as Meta's Muse and OpenAI's dots, act as intermediaries that hide the users behind them from websites.
Because agentic traffic is growing quickly and may eclipse human browsing, simply blocking intermediaries will stop being viable.
Cloudflare proposes an Intermediation Principle: the business relationship and security responsibilities between users and sites must hold regardless of intermediation, with agents and their operators also recognizable and accountable.
Using an analogy of a personal assistant serving several clients, it illustrates problems with personalization, disputed purchases, and credential stuffing that sites need identity, reputation, and accountability to address.