“The entire security industry is built on the notion that there's a human sitting on the other side of the glass. We rely on fingerprints, facial scans, SMS codes, captchas, all designed to answer one question: are you a real person? Now, when you have an AI agent using your application, every one of those traditional trust signals completely collapses. You can't ask an AI agent to solve a puzzle with stoplights or enter a six-digit code the human got on their phone.”
Insights Unlocked · User Experience · November 2026
Context
Asked how AI agents acting on a user's behalf change digital identity, a Twilio product VP says current authentication assumes a human user, and lays out how identity has to change for agents.
Transcript
…is about to arrive, that's us. If you receive a six-digit code from your bank to let you log in, that's also us. If you get a call from a bank alerting you, there's a fraud transaction, that is also us powering that. Or if you get a promotional email from your favorite brand, that's also likely us.
…going to send me a message, hey, we need to confirm that's you. But now we're moving into this world where AI agents are going to be, you know, empowered on our behalf to be doing this or that. Can you just talk to us about how does that change the way companies need to think about identity? Yeah.
Look, I think it changes everything, right? Look at the last 30 years. The entire security industry is built on the notion that there's a human sitting on the other side of the glass, right? We rely on things like fingerprints, facial scans, SMS codes, captchas, all designed to answer every single question. Are you a real person, right? Should you be allowed to do this? Now, when you have an AI agent using your application, every single one of those traditional trust signals completely collapses, right? You can't ask an AI agent to go solve a puzzle with stoplights or to enter a six-digit code that the human got on their phone, right? So we really need to think about, you know, as we move into this agentic world, you know, how do we re-architect identity? And to me, it's like three fundamental shifts, right? So first is identity, you know, shifts from who you are to what you've been authorized to do, right? Second, we have to throw out this whole notion of broad, persistent access, right? When you log into an app today, you'll stay logged in, right? You're never logged out. But giving an AI agent open-ended access to something, say your credit card, right, or your account is a recipe for disaster because guess what? They hallucinate, they get…
I think you nail it right there: is that the user will eventually just migrate to those companies that make them feel safe. And you're speaking about that, you know, that trust layer and sort of that, you know, usually, you know, we were just talking about the banking example, and I have to kind of…
Yeah. So, you know, you brought up the banking sample, right? You know, the way I think about it is my experience, when I go to any website, right, it almost feels like I'm going through a TSA security checkpoint every time. You open a website, the first thing it asks you, prove to me you're a…
It seems like it's almost like a I don't know if you guys are probably thinking about these things, but it's new to me like a universal sort of authorization, right? If you're powering all these different companies, you know, the security layer on there, wouldn't I have like a Twilio account where…
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