ABSTRACT
AI agents – systems that plan, act, and interact in the world with limited human oversight – are proliferating across every sector of the economy. Unlike generative AI tools that produce content in response to prompts, agents can enter into contracts, execute financial transactions, communicate with third parties, and, with developments in robotics, operate machinery. This creates an accountability gap that existing tort, contract, and agency law alone cannot bridge. Important preconditions for law to function are absent when agents are the ones acting. There must be means of identifying responsible actors, tracing causation, attributing authority, and, in cases involving financial transactions or significant risks, ensuring funds and mechanisms are available for dispute resolution.
This Article proposes a registration framework for AI agents, drawing on three bodies of knowledge not previously synthesized. First, it situates the accountability gap within a broader visibility problem and surveys the identification and registration systems, from corporate registration to securities identifiers to business numbering systems, that have made complex market actors legible throughout commercial history. Second, it draws on corporate law to provide the conceptual architecture, treating registration as a constitutive act that brings a new category of legal-governance object into existence, with structures calibrated to risk, limited liability as an incentive, and veil-piercing as an enforcement backstop. Third, it shows how blockchain technology provides the technical infrastructure for a dynamic, decentralized, programmable registry.
The resulting regime operates on three tiers. Basic registration assigns a unique identifier, making agents visible to the legal system. Standard registration constitutes a legal-governance object with defined attributes and confers legal protections that incentivize voluntary participation. Full registration requires posting a surety bond via smart contract and adopting a Ricardian contract for dispute resolution. This regime would create the informational infrastructure that enables an AI insurance market to function, generating a self-sustaining cycle that does not depend on government mandates.
Werbach, Kevin, Agents, Inc (March 23, 2026).
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