AI and Consumer Markets: UK Competition and Consumer Law Implications for Businesses

Short summary

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority published a discussion paper examining agentic AI's implications for competition, consumer welfare, and digital market structure. The paper flags four key risk areas: algorithmic collusion via multi-agent systems, abuse of dominance through agent self-preferencing, consumer steering and exploitative design, and market concentration triggering investigation powers. Businesses developing or procuring AI agents should treat this as an early signal of coordinated cross-regulator enforcement under existing competition law and the new DMCC Act regime.

• •CMA identifies agentic AI as a step-change in consumer-market interaction, raising competition and consumer protection concerns
• •Four key risk areas: algorithmic collusion, dominance abuse via agent preference, consumer steering/exploitation, and structural market concentration
• •Coordinated engagement across CMA, FCA, ICO, and Ofcom signals proactive multi-regime enforcement under CA98 and DMCC Act

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