In the age of AI, where we expect speed and innovation, nearly two centuries of history of information gathering is no longer enough. That’s one reason Experian, a leading data, analytics, and consumer credit reporting company, has teamed up with agent AI startup Skyfire and other companies to develop a framework to verify that AI agents behave as instructed.
Kathleen Peters, chief innovation officer at Experian, spoke to InformationWeek about how her company is leveraging startups to identify new opportunities in the AI era. This includes a partnership with Skyfire to create the Experian Agent Trust framework for validating transactions performed by AI agents.
The framework includes resources from Cloudflare and Visa Intelligent Commerce, and Skyfire provides a standardized way to exchange agent-related information across platforms.
Experian has extensive experience understanding consumer and business identities, validating them deterministically for compliance and probabilistically for fraud detection and fraud risk, Peters said. The company’s history dates back to 1826. experienced some of the changes. The rise of AI, and now AI agents, is part of a generational technology evolution in the transactional space.
“The landscape is constantly changing from in-person to digital and now to agents acting on behalf of humans,” she said.
Mr. Peters has been with Experian for 13 years, spending much of his time verifying identity and detecting fraud. Experian is looking at the AI landscape, how CIOs are thinking about AI from an employee perspective, and how AI relates to identity access management, Peters said. This includes verifying that people accessing these systems or seeking these services are who they say they are.
As more consumers use AI tools — including agents — When companies like OpenAI and Stripe form partnerships during the purchasing process, questions arise about the freedom these agencies are given.
“Who am I going to give this information to? Is this agent trying to commit fraud? The last thing I have to do is call my bank and credit card company and say, ‘I don’t remember these transactions, I don’t know how they happened,'” Peters said.
Validation of AI agent
Fraudulent transactions and billing errors are not new, so there may be a lack of trust among consumers and merchants in AI-driven transactions, he said. This is one reason why retailers build security layers into their websites, such as firewalls. Many of these measures are aimed at protecting against intrusions such as bots, but the rise of AI has changed the way we look at bots.
“Before AI, bots were the equivalent of bad guys. If a bot comes to your site, you want to block it because it’s not going to be good. It’s an attack, or it could be an attack.” scraperNo one knows what it is,” Peters said.
Validating the bot-like behavior of AI agents is where Experian and its collaborators aim to come into play. The framework developed by Experian with input from Skyfire is a “know your agent” way to act on behalf of your customers. “It’s like KYC. [know your customer]especially well known in AML. [anti-money laundering] “We intend to use the same approved methods that we currently do for traditional KYC, especially in digital banking onboarding.” This could include requesting a credit card to confirm transactions.
Experian considers strategic investment in startups
Skyfire is an AI startup from San Francisco that has developed an open standard called KYAPay, Peters said. KYAPay allows developers to verify the identity of their AI agents and track their activities. He said the collaboration with Skyfire is part of Experian’s overall efforts to explore strategic venture investment opportunities, including M&A. “We’re excited about what’s cutting-edge in terms of functionality.”
and Growth and rapid movement in the AI field Peters said Experian runs internal demo days to understand what startups are producing, and said there has been some disruption in recent years. “My team goes to shows, does desk research, meets with companies, goes to incubators, and builds lists. [of startups to watch]. We do this about three or four times a year,” she said.
Demo Day will be held virtually, with participants from various departments across Experian hearing pitches. Peters’ team then divides and conquers, either following them or directing another Experian business unit to pursue a collaboration with the startup. “That’s how we found Skyfire,” Peters said.
What stood out about Skyfire, she said, was its focus on e-commerce and agency commerce, and the open standards of identity they had created. “We knew they would be a valuable partner in helping us solve this problem. [agentic commerce] ecosystem. They see early on where a lot of the problems and challenges are. ”
Experian, a data and analytics company, has been using machine learning and AI techniques for years. Peters said the company’s research lab has been working on neural networks for more than a decade. She said there was a natural curiosity within the company as generative AI came to the fore. “We set up a risk council, put guardrails and enterprise tools in place, and started figuring out what the best AI stack would be internally.”
Peters said Experian continues to look for technologies developed by startups that may be applicable to or adjacent to the operations and services the company wants to expand. “We may partner with them, we may make a strategic investment in them, we may put them on our watch list for acquisitions,” he said.
