• by Joe Mandese , Today

Establishing ethical and privacy standards are the top steps marketers say the industry needs to take to prepare for a future when consumers delegate tasks to AI agents. That's the finding of on-premises audience polling conducted by The Harris Poll during the Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing Conference, Oct. 21-24 in Orlando.

The finding, released as part of a broader report of responses to questions fielded at the ANA conference, is noteworthy, because that future may be closer than may marketers think.

On Monday, ProjectVRM unveiled some momentum for its so-called "MyTerms" project, including a new website hosting the activity of the new global standard for machine-readable personal privacy terms that proponents believe will be the basis for consumers delegating marketing-related interactions to AI agents.

The standard, developed by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in partnership with ProjecVRM, is technically known as P7012, will officially be rolled out early next year, and is expected to be fully deployed by 2030.

The site will serve as a clearing house for MyTerms' development and deployment and launches with a framework of five proposed consumer personal privacy agreements covering both relationships and data usage. You can read them here.

If that's a little too wonky for you, I recommend you at least read ProjectVRM Founder Doc Searls' blog post about the launch. And while you're doing so, you might want to have John Lennon's "Imagine" playing in the background. I guarantee it will get you in the spirit of things.