In the permission economy, who earns the right to act?

Customers are comfortable delegating select tasks and activities because their cognitive load has become unsustainable. They want help reducing it, but on their terms.

The EY AI Sentiment Study 2026 reinforces how fast delegation can compound once familiarity sets in. In its Pioneer Markets — the cluster of geographies that have a larger share of early adopters who are embracing AI — 94% of consumers now use AI, while nearly a quarter have already used autonomous AI that acts on their behalf.¹  Globally, 36% want AI to apply discounts at checkout automatically, and 30% would accept an AI-managed home security system. Where comfort builds, delegation follows.¹

For consumer-facing leaders, trust in AI should be shaped not by a single metric, but by the customer’s needs in the emotional and functional demands of a particular moment. The same negotiation runs through how customers connect and spend, and how far they’ll let a brand act for them. Success depends on not just understanding who the customer is, but the moment they are in.

AI is the sharpest arena for the permission economy, but it isn’t the only one. The same push and pull surfaces across everything customers buy, choose and trust — as nine trends pulling in opposing directions.

Customers are pulling back from screens yet adopting more AI for a feeling of connection and wellbeing. They’ll pay a value premium, but only under the right circumstances. And they’re delegating more yet trusting less. The permission economy is decided in how customers resolve these three tensions.

Each tension settles a different kind of permission, and they build on one another. Overload and connection determines whether a brand is let into a customer's life at all. Restraint and reward decides whether it can charge a premium for being there. Delegation and doubt decides whether it can act on the customer’s behalf. Presence, then price, then authority – and a brand has to earn each one before the next is on the table.

Each trend is a force, not a mandate. Every brand gets to choose which side of the tension it stands on.

Tension 1: Overload and connection

This is the first permission in practice. Customers are adopting more technology while actively trying to escape it, and they’re looking to brands for the human things technology can’t supply.

Something the AI conversation often misses is that as automation accelerates, the human parts of the brand experience are becoming more valuable. Three consumer trends make this concrete: seeking simplicity, a craving for community and wellness as non-negotiable. Each one describes a different facet of a single underlying demand: customers want to be recognized rather than transacted with.

1. Seeking simplicity: This trend captures the strain. Sixty-five percent of consumers say they’re experiencing digital overload. Among 18-to-24-year-olds an equal share actively want to cut their time on social and digital devices. The relief they’re seeking is what makes the other three trends matter. They’re clearing space for connection, health and meaning.
   
   
2. Craving for community: This trend finds that 71% of consumers feel brands have a role to play in creating opportunities to socialize or connect. This plays differently by life stage. Among 25-to-34-year-olds, 53% say feeling lonely and seeking social connection has become more relevant to them, substantially higher than older cohorts. Younger customers may be more open to AI, but they’re also more in need of what AI can’t provide.
   
   
3. Wellness as a non-negotiable: This trend finds that 95% of consumers are making intentional choices with their long-term health in mind; 83% say it matters how others see their health. Wellness has become more of an identity marker than a behavior. 

The brands that win human connection will be those that stop treating it as the channel of last resort. Companies are dedicating significant time to carefully analyze every word on customer-facing fraud-detection language, to help customers know what to do.² Empathy at scale is engineered, not assumed.

Tension 2: Restraint and reward

The next permission is the right to charge for that presence. Money is playing an increasing role in what customers are willing to pay to simplify their lives and find the connection they crave. They both economize and indulge. But above all, they want to be free of the effort.

Customers now view frictionless basics as table stakes. Ninety-two percent of customers rate frictionless payments as relevant. Functional chatbots, route planning and AI summaries fall into the same category. None of these earn loyalty anymore. Yet their absence will lose it. 

1. Convenience premium: This trend highlights the importance of offloading tasks to improve wellbeing: 45% of consumers say reducing mental effort has become more relevant. The appeal is sharpest among those who feel digitally overwhelmed (42%) or face decision fatigue (42%). This is where willingness to pay concentrates. Those with more financial means are more likely to pay the premium.
   
   
2. Sustaining sustainability: This trend shows a similar gradient. Forty-two percent of financially comfortable consumers say sustainability being affordable feels more relevant than before, versus 29% of those struggling. Sustainability is increasingly concentrated among those with the financial room to choose it. Yet 51% of all consumers, comfortable or struggling, say seeking creative, low-cost ways to live sustainably has become more relevant.
   
   
3. Micro-indulgences: This trend reveals the most human face of the divide. Small treats are common across financial groups. However, those struggling financially are less likely to budget them deliberately (33% vs. 40%) and far more likely to seek cheaper alternatives (59% vs. 43%). The desire for indulgences doesn’t disappear under financial pressure. Consumers simply find ways to improvise.

The lesson here is that a one-size-fits-all value proposition won’t work, nor will offerings that are binary – one for the wealthy and one for everyone else. Instead, brands will want to tier premium value with a base experience that works flawlessly for everyone, because that base experience is where the relationship lives.

A premium model to consider is one that theme parks use for their queues. Those who can pay buy a full skip-the-line pass. Others buy access to a few key moments. Those who pay nothing still get a queue that the park has made genuinely better. Each tier creates value; none is treated as a penalty.

For consumer-facing brands, the design challenge is to build premium human and AX features the affluent will pay for, while designing the standard service to be fast, dignified and worth choosing on its own.

Tension 3: Delegation and doubt

This is the deepest permission of all: the right to act on the customer’s behalf. This is the defining tension, as customers hand over more data and control even as they trust brands less. In practice, they delegate where a task feels low-stakes and withhold where it feels personal. That line runs along an industry axis as much as a task one. Customers outsource fastest in the most commoditized categories – energy, insurance, telecoms, where the best option is largely an optimization problem – and hold on hardest where the information is personal and the stakes are identity-deep, as in health and money. The more interchangeable a category looks to the customer, the more willing they are to let AI run it. Three consumer trends illustrate this. 

1. Collaborative AX: This trend shows customers actively defining their partnership with AI. Delegated authority is the current frontier. Yet only 18% of consumers find AI handling routine purchases very relevant today, while half (49%) reject the idea outright. However, a recent EY AI Sentiment Study shows where this is heading. In Pioneer Markets, the early adopters are already moving into delegated authority, particularly in finance and retail.¹ The brands that win delegated authority in five years will be those that earn permission for smaller handovers now.
   
   
2. Cautious consumer: This trend shows the steepest rise in relevance of the nine trends tracked. More than two-thirds (68%) of consumers say their skepticism has grown. Ninety-five percent say they need evidence of value before purchase. Ninety-three percent cross-check information before buying. Eighty-nine percent trust other consumers over brand advertising. And 92% say they are more likely to buy from brands that are transparent about their practices.

3. The milestones in motion trend finds that 89% of consumers now prioritize meaning over money, with the desire to move at one’s own pace, cutting across all age groups.

The implications for CMOs, CCOs and CXOs are direct. Polished campaigns yield less ROI. Structured transparency, third-party verification and peer amplification yield more. The EY Studio+ consumer trends study notes that peer credibility itself is fragmenting. Micro-communities and niche experts now outweigh mass influencers and celebrity creators in driving real purchase decisions.

As a result, three forms of proof are now non-negotiable: 

• Evidentiary proof is the visible data on what a brand or AI did, traceable provenance and records that customers can revisit. EY Studio+ Human Signals research reinforces this finding from a service-design angle: when interactions with AI agents are fleeting, the record itself becomes part of the trust architecture.³
  
  
• Emotional proof is the recognition of context, non-judgmental support and customer control over tone and pace. 
  
  
• Relational proof centers on peer validation, micro-community endorsement and lived experience over advertising.

EY AI Sentiment Study adds an accountability dimension: six in 10 consumers globally worry that organizations will fail to hold themselves accountable for AI use that leads to negative consequences.¹ As Sarah Liang, EY Global Responsible AI Leader, observes, “Regardless of where people live or how advanced AI adoption is, they’re asking for clearer rules, stronger accountability and visible protections.”

Some organizations are responding. Tokio Marine Holdings, for example, published a group-wide AI governance policy in 2025 committing to human oversight, bias mitigation, and transparency in all AI use across its global operations.⁴ This is what built-in proof looks like.

The three tensions describe a permission economy that is operationally more challenging than the one consumer-facing brands were designed for. Customers are moving faster and their expectations are more specific. At the same time, the boundaries they set are more visible, and less forgiving when crossed. Closing that gap doesn’t come down to a single capability. It requires a different operating logic.

Across the data, five shifts stand out that can help leaders set the terms in the permission economy. Several of them concentrate on the top of the ladder – delegation – because that is where permission is hardest to win and quickest to lose. The right to act is the one customers guard most closely, so it is the one most worth getting right.

1. Map your portfolio against need states, not use cases. Replace “where can we deploy AI?” with “what state is the customer in, and what kind of help do they want?” Need-state mapping shows where customers want assistance, delegation, relief from complexity or whether they want the brand to stay out entirely. The overwhelmed customer isn’t asking for another feature; they’re asking brands to remove steps, decisions and noise.
   
   
2. Build a permission ladder for every customer interaction. Define explicitly what the brand will do for the customer, with the customer, and only at the customer’s request. Importantly, make those boundaries visible. They’re what makes the experience trustworthy by signaling where automation begins, human judgment remains, and customers retain control. Brands can move at a tempo that aligns to how people build confidence and make decisions. Visible constraints aren’t a limitation on the experience — they are the experience.
   
   
3. Treat proof as a product feature, not a marketing afterthought. Invest in traceability, conversation logs, third-party validation, and peer-amplification infrastructure. The brands that win the cautious customer will be those whose proof is built in, not bolted on.
   
   
4. Segment by AI and financial readiness, not demographics. A pioneer-market early adopter and a lagging-market skeptic in the same age bracket need very different experiences. Rather than splitting customers into a premium track and a budget track, design tiered premium value — distinctive human and AX features for those willing to pay, on top of a base experience that works flawlessly for everyone. Each tier should add value. None should feel like a penalty. Develop them in parallel, not in sequence.
   
   
5. Redeploy people to where empathy is irreplaceable. Use AI to handle the neutral, transactional, and sensitive personal moments. Reserve human contact for anger, fraud, complex decisions and high-stakes life events. This is where quality over cost will pay off.

The license to lead

The brands that win in 2026 will be those that understand customers are not resisting AI, automation, or scale. They are negotiating the terms on which they will accept them. These terms are being set now.

Consumer-facing brands that wait for clarity will inherit terms set by others. Brands that move deliberately will set them. Customers aren’t offering a blanket permission slip. The license to lead is earned, transaction by transaction, moment by moment – and can be withdrawn the same way.

With thanks to Lucy Orrell-Jones and Tabitha Platt for leading the 2026 edition of the Future Consumer research.

Summary

The Future Consumer Index 2026 highlights the emergence of a permission economy where consumers grant brands conditional, revocable rights to act on their behalf. Consumers face three key tensions: balancing digital overload with connection, managing restraint alongside reward, and navigating delegation amid doubt. Trust is increasingly transactional, requiring brands to prove value and transparency continuously. AI adoption exemplifies this negotiation, with consumers selectively delegating tasks while setting boundaries. Leaders must adapt by mapping customer needs, building clear permission frameworks, embedding proof as a core feature, segmenting by readiness and focusing human empathy where indispensable.