Prodigal Research · First published Oct. 19, 2026 · Written for credit risk, servicing and collections leaders
Joe Devoy didn't shop for car insurance this fall. His AI agent did. Meta's new Muse assistant found the startup founder a policy that cost $3,500 a year less, bought it and cancelled his old one in about five minutes, he posted on X on Sept. 10.
Many errands like this end at a bank, a lender, a servicer or a debt collector. Within five weeks of Muse's debut, JPMorgan Chase said it blocks outside agents that try to get into accounts with customers' banking credentials, and PNC's chief executive said agents wouldn't transact in customer accounts "on my watch."
For years, lenders asked how to use AI to reach their customers. Now they have to decide what to do when their customers' AI reaches them.
The short version
Four assistants named in this report show the range. Two are full personal agents, one is a phone feature that stands between a caller and a consumer, and one is a general-purpose assistant that people have pointed at their bills.
| Assistant | What it does | Notable detail |
|---|---|---|
| Muse Meta | Personal agent that can lower bills and make payments. Connects to bank accounts through Plaid. | Launched Sept. 8, 2026. Began calling US businesses Sept. 16.TechCrunch, Fortune |
| Instinct | Text-and-call concierge. Places calls to sort out cable-bill problems. | Raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation in September 2026.Fortune, TechCrunch |
| iOS 26 Apple | Screens calls from unknown numbers and waits on hold in call-center queues for the owner. | Asks for the caller's name and reason before the phone rings.TechCrunch |
| Claude Anthropic | General-purpose AI assistant. | Helped one family contest a $195,628 hospital bill, which they settled for about $33,000.TechSpot |
Still few, but most would like to. About one in 16 Americans, at most, say an AI agent has contacted a company for them. Two in three would like one. And consumers trust the institutions they bank with more than they trust the AI.
Few have tried it. Most want it.
US consumers. Lorikeet survey, n=1,966, Sept. 30 to Oct. 8, 2026. First figure is an upper bound.
They trust institutions more than the AI.
Visa Trust Index with The Harris Poll, n=2,065 US consumers, May 2026; Experian, n=6,247 in 13 markets, July 2026.
The chores come first. Posts on X, Reddit, Threads and TikTok over the past year show a consistent pattern: people hand agents the errands they put off, and most of those involve money.
What people ask their agents to do, ranked by how often each appears
Prodigal's read of posts and press coverage, Sept. 2025 to Oct. 2026. Bars show relative frequency, not a survey result.
In three places: the application and the credit file, the call and the bill, and the revenue that depends on customers not paying attention. Each lands on a different team.
| Figure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| 59% | of US adults have used an AI tool to help choose a financial product. 53% of them opened the exact product it suggested. Credit cards were the most researched.BestMoney survey, 1,000 US adults, Sept. 2026 |
| 54% | of consumers in 13 markets are comfortable letting an agent apply for credit for them. In a live demo at Sierra's summit, Muse obtained a mortgage pre-approval from Rocket's own agent after a Rocket executive, acting as the borrower, signed in to share credit and income details.Experian; Sierra |
| 70,000+ | credit-report errors disputed with AI-written letters during a two-month pilot at Kikoff, a credit-building app.Kikoff via Business Wire, Aug. 2025 |
| Figure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| iOS 26 | answers calls from unknown numbers and asks for the caller's name and reason before the phone rings. Hold Assist waits in call-center queues for the owner.TechCrunch |
| 4+ | kinds of consumer AI that collections compliance officers report meeting, including call screeners, dispute-letter generators, settlement bots and tools that quietly coach a consumer during a live call. Some creditors refuse to deal with an agent at all.accountsrecovery.net webinar, July 2026 |
| $195,628 | hospital bill a family audited with Claude, finding duplicate and miscoded charges. They settled for about $33,000. The American Hospital Association has alerted members that patients increasingly use AI to dispute bills.TechSpot; The New York Times via The Star |
| Figure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| No. 1 | request in the posts we reviewed: find and cancel something. Instinct founder Noah Shinn has said users have cancelled hundreds of dollars' worth of subscriptions through his agent.Fortune |
| $250 | Delta credit Muse won for one user after a seven-hour delay. It filed the claim and rebooked the flight.Tom's Guide |
| Sept. 22 | Bank and brokerage shares fell on concern that agents would steer customers' cash to higher-yielding products. JPMorgan had its worst day since February; Schwab fell 5%.Dow Jones via Tiger Brokers |
AffirmAI "will find the 'gotcha.'"
Max Levchin, CEO, Affirm, on business models that rely on inattentive customers (Reuters)
Not every assignment ends in savings. The early record includes bans, overspending, privacy slips and undisclosed humans behind the bot.
Banned by Resy
An Instinct agent pinged Resy hundreds of times an hour for a steakhouse table. Its owner, JC Bahr-de Stefano, called the ban a fair response.
The $31 dozen
Asked to find the cheapest eggs for delivery, OpenAI's Operator bought them, for $31.43, without asking first.
"Yep I'm here!"
Muse took a lowball offer for a YouTuber's keyboard, gave the buyer his home address and replied "Yep I'm here!" when the buyer arrived. He was not there.
The person behind the bot
When some businesses kept hanging up on Muse, Meta tested human contractors placing its calls without proper disclosure. A Meta vice president called that a mistake.
The $1,000 challenge
Meta's AI chief dared users to save $1,000 with Muse. A TechRadar reviewer tried. He saved about $35.
Beep, boop
Two voice agents booking a hotel realized they were both AI and switched to a data-over-sound protocol called Gibberlink.
By drawing lines first. In five weeks, consumer agents went from a product launch to a topic on bank earnings calls.
From launch to earnings calls: September to October 2026
JPMorgan Chase"You don't want rogue agents."
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase, on the bank's third-quarter earnings call, Oct. 13, 2026
"We're not going to allow just any outside agent to come inside the company, because that's just too risky," Mr. Dimon said. A spokesperson said the bank supports "secure, customer-authorized data sharing through open banking providers." (Fortune)
Bank and payments chief executives split into two camps: those putting control first, and those offering access on terms.
PNC"Not going to happen on my watch that something can come in here and transact on your behalf without you knowing it."
William Demchak, CEO, PNC, Oct. 15 (PYMNTS)
Citi"I am confident I won't have wild agents without the right controls in place."
Jane Fraser, CEO, Citi, at Sibos, Sept. 30 (Funds Society)
Wells Fargo"There's no question that agents will become a part of the way people interact."
Charlie Scharf, CEO, Wells Fargo, who called fears of an agent-driven deposit run "completely overdone," Oct. 14 (AIM Media House)
Visa"Agentic commerce is a when, not an if."
Ryan McInerney, CEO, Visa, July 28 (earnings call)
American Express"If our cardmembers are left holding the bag, we'll back our cardmembers."
Stephen Squeri, CEO, American Express, Apr. 23 (Digital Transactions)
The agents are arriving before the rules. Four questions keep coming up in earnings calls, speeches and compliance webinars: identity, liability, consent and pricing.
Lenders know how to verify a borrower. Few can yet verify that a piece of software speaks for one, or within what limits. Networks and bureaus have built agent registries, and Sierra published a protocol for agents to identify themselves and request scoped permission.
Building agent identity
Bank design partners on Sierra's protocol
No rule yet settles who covers the loss when an authorized agent goes beyond its instructions. PNC's Mr. Demchak said lawmakers would have to act first: "There's going to have to be laws passed on liability shifting."
Federal debt-collection rules limit whom a collector may discuss a debt with. Panelists at a July industry webinar advised collectors to confirm the consumer's authorization by keypad or multifactor check, get it in writing, and end the call if the agent has no authority to pay.
Agents don't forget to cancel, and they compare rates without being asked. Fees, rate drift and idle balances that rely on customer inattention are likely to be tested first.
Credit risk
Servicing
Collections
Federal Reserve"Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?"
Christopher Waller, Federal Reserve governor, at Sibos in Miami, Sept. 29, 2026 (speech)
For now, the answer depends on which institution the agent reaches.
Muse went from launch to five million downloads in three weeks. Within five weeks, the chief executives of JPMorgan Chase and PNC were answering analysts' questions about it. The agents will keep getting better at the chores customers hand them, and those chores run straight through lenders, servicers and debt collectors.
The institutions that decide early how to recognize an agent, what it may do and how to prove what it agreed to will set the terms for everyone else. The rules of engagement between customers and their lenders are being rewritten this quarter, not this decade.
Personal AI agents are assistants that act for a consumer rather than only answer questions: they place calls, chat with customer service, file claims and complete purchases. Examples include Meta's Muse, Instinct's text-and-call concierge and the call screening built into iOS 26. Consumers use them mostly for money errands: cancelling forgotten subscriptions, negotiating phone, cable and internet bills, auditing medical bills and switching insurance.
Not on open terms yet. JPMorgan Chase said it blocks outside agents that try to get into accounts with customers' banking credentials, while supporting customer-authorized data sharing through open banking providers. PNC's chief executive said agents will not transact on a customer's behalf without the customer knowing. Wells Fargo's chief executive expects agents to become part of how people interact, and Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Synchrony and Chime are design partners on Sierra's agent-identity protocol.
Only with care. Federal debt-collection rules, including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the CFPB's Regulation F, limit whom a collector may discuss a debt with, so the question is consent. Panelists at a July 2026 industry webinar advised collectors to confirm the consumer's authorization by keypad or multifactor check, get it in writing, and end the call if the agent has no authority to pay. Some creditors refuse to deal with an agent at all. This is not legal advice.
No rule yet settles who covers the loss when an authorized agent goes beyond its instructions. PNC's William Demchak said laws on liability shifting will have to be passed, and Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller asked in September 2026 who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase. For now, the answer depends on which institution the agent reaches.
Few so far, but most want to. In a Lorikeet survey of 1,966 US consumers (Sept. 30 to Oct. 8, 2026), at most 6% said an AI agent had contacted a company for them, 66% said they would like one that does, and 76% of early users used one again. Separately, 59% of US adults have used AI to help choose a financial product, according to BestMoney.
They are standards that let an AI agent identify itself to a business and request permission for a defined scope of actions, so an institution can check that software really speaks for its customer and within what limits. Visa (Trusted Agent Protocol), Mastercard (Agent Pay) and Experian (Agent Trust) have built agent registries, and Sierra published its Personal Agent Protocol on Oct. 9, 2026, with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Synchrony and Chime as design partners.
Compiled from public reporting, filings, transcripts and surveys published between Sept. 2025 and Oct. 19, 2026. Outcomes in social posts are self-reported. Quotes are verbatim from the linked source. The task ranking reflects how often each task appeared in the posts and coverage reviewed; it is not a statistical sample. This report is not legal advice.
Screenshots of public posts on X and Threads are by their authors, captured Oct. 19, 2026; an email address in the Resy screenshot is blurred. Company names are trademarks of their owners and are cited only to identify the organizations; no endorsement or relationship with Prodigal is implied.
Prodigal Research is published by Prodigal, which builds AI agents for lenders, loan servicers and collections teams.
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