Anyone who’s familiar with New York’s Canal St’s history knows the realities of fashion fakery. As the market embraces digital technology, specifically AI, and even more specifically agentic AI, a new front is opening in the war against design fraud.
Last week, a so-called “small-cap” NASDAQ stock, Digital Brands Group (DBG), announced a new AI brand protection collaboration with an unnamed outdoor performance label. In their release, they highlighted how AI is changing the way brands reach customers, but, as with many things in this sector, it was clouded by technical vagaries that sound impressive when said quickly but leave questions when read thoroughly.
In a statement, Hil Davis, CEO of Digital Brands Group, said, “This collaboration represents another important step in Digital Brands Group’s broader technology strategy. We believe AI-powered tools will become increasingly important as global brands continue navigating rapidly evolving digital commerce environments. Our goal is to continue building relationships and technology partnerships that create meaningful long-term value across the broader retail and consumer brand landscape.”
To translate, what Davis is referring to is the current transition to agentic AI in the shopping environment. According to Adobe Analytics, AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped roughly 693% year-over-year during the 2025 holiday shopping season, and McKinsey now estimates the global agentic commerce opportunity could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030. But here is the part that gets glossed over: the phrases “AI-driven traffic” and “global agentic commerce.”
By using the terms AI-driven traffic and agentic traffic, the writers are referring not to customers who received a recommendation and chose to click on a retailer’s website, but to an AI that browsed a retailer’s site instead of a person and reported back suggestions, or, in the case of tools like Gemini, even did the purchasing itself. This change creates several new scenarios that retailers should be keenly aware of. First, if AI is shopping your store instead of people, the AI is now your customer and not the person (creating a rethinking in how your site is designed, including metadata).) Second, when AI shops your store, you get the AI’s customer data, not the person who bought the item (posing problems for the customer service tracking backend). And third, if AI is shopping and you’re a bad-faith actor in the transaction, you only need to fool AI, not a person (opening new pathways for digital fraud).
My personal background in military counterintelligence and cybersecurity has taught me some interesting things about digital vulnerabilities. If we start with Goodhart’s Law (where any economic measure ceases to be a good measure once you start to use it), and we implement that at the speed of a microprocessor, we get ourselves into a new, unique problem.
Here’s what I mean by all that. An item for sale on the internet needs to account for two things: the words a typical customer might use to find that item, and the data points a retailer would list to meet that search. When AI is used for both sides of that search, we reach a new problem. AI knows exactly what to say to trick itself.
But some companies are doing what they can to adjust for that. For example, the aforementioned DBG also announced a new strategic AI and brand protection collaboration. The initiative is being supported through DBG’s existing relationship with SECUR3D Inc., the Vancouver-based AI brand-protection company whose technology is expected to help identify unauthorized digital assets, counterfeit listings, and broader online intellectual property concerns across digital marketplaces and emerging online channels.
However, what does this mean for you? Well, as we wrote in a previous piece about agentic AI, your customer isn’t just the shopper anymore; it’s the shopper’s digital assistant. But to add to that, you’re not just worrying about a spoofed website anymore, you’ve gotta protect yourself from an entire ecosystem that is actively working to defraud your e-commerce platform. As we prepare for the future, retailers need to be ready because artificial intelligence is also coming for your customers in the form of impostors.