A Right to Delegate to AI: The Regulatory Safety Halo and the Acceleration of Agentic Consumer Markets

Abstract The European Law Institute’s Guiding Principles and Model Rules on Digital Assistants for Consumer Contracts (DACC) propose a right for consumers to use digital assistants in business-to-consumer relations. The DACC’s definition encompasses consumer AI agents (CAIAs), which use AI-generated outputs to determine transactionally relevant matters left open by consumers and initiate or perform transactional actions. The article examines two concerns. First, recognition and safeguards may create a regulatory safety halo, causing consumers to overestimate CAIAs’ technical reliability and the effectiveness of remedies for unwanted outcomes. Second, recognition may accelerate agentic markets, disproportionately benefit incumbents in adjacent digital markets, and foster concentration, to which the DMA and EU competition law provide only partial responses. Legislation should therefore first establish essential rules governing delegation, responsibility and market contestability. Technical implementation may be entrusted to European standardisation bodies, but the Commission’s request should define tasks precisely and maximise transparency and balanced stakeholder participation to mitigate legitimacy concerns. Only once CAIAs are sufficiently reliable and the legal framework more mature should the right to use a CAIA be recognised.