Marketing to machines: the fiduciary illusion in anticipatory companion AI

Abstract This paper analyses an ethical problem emerging at the intersection of two recent developments: the deployment of anticipatory companion AI (ACAI) as continuously integrated personal agents, and the articulation of Agentic AI Optimisation (AAIO) as a paradigm for shaping how such agents engage with their digital environment. The paper’s central diagnosis is the fiduciary illusion : the configuration in which the fiduciary appearance of ACAI is preserved as a surface phenomenon while two interlocking illusions (a categorical illusion that suppresses recognition of the relationship as one calling for critical evaluation, and a contamination illusion that hides commercial influence within the system’s reasoning) operate beneath the surface to violate the two conditions of legitimate suggestion that the appearance purports to satisfy. We argue that the correctives proposed by Floridi et al. do not jointly address this configuration, with the gaps traceable to anticipating engagement and companion-mode presence, and that existing frameworks on online manipulation, relational autonomy, and the right against mental interference, while indispensable to the diagnosis, require extension at the specific points the configuration exposes. A moral right to vanilla AI is advanced as a normative response, articulated in two layers corresponding to the two illusions. The right’s minimal form secures availability of vanilla engagement; how the conditions the diagnosis identifies could be secured for users who choose ACAI remains an urgent open question.