Personalization Does a 180 ========================== The personalized experiences brands promised for years are about to come from the AI we carry with us. ![](https://assets.brentturner.is/_fitWide1600/10174/issue-56-cover-the-new-new.webp) The promise of personalized experiences remains the holy grail, the white whale, and the vision board dream for business and brand leaders everywhere. The supposed trade-off for every app, retailer, airline, and loyalty program collecting our data is that they’ll make our experiences with them better. The view has been: _Brands Need to Personalize Their Customers’ Experiences._ That view is about to do a complete 180. With [personal AI in our pockets, on our faces, around our necks, at our deskside, and installed on the walls of our homes](https://thenewnew.is/p/personal-ai-moves-in), and with the rise of [The New B2B (bot-to-bot)](https://thenewnew.is/p/the-new-b2bs), the strategic construct for personalized experiences is about to move from “brand owned” to “consumer (and their agent) owned.” _(Aside: With the teams at_ [_Opus Agency_](https://www.opusagency.com/)_, I recently explored how events will be the test bed for innovation in this space. That thinking is featured in our newly published ‘zine,_ [The Outlier](https://www.opusagency.com/report/the-outlier-redefining-connection)_. It’s worth its own click in, no email gates in the way!)_ ### **Personal AI got a personality** [Last issue,](https://thenewnew.is/p/personal-ai-moves-in) personal AI was serious business: deskside boxes, desktops, and wall units in our homes. Since then, personal AI has gotten cute and fun. Big tech ushered in the [cutewashing era](https://www.fastcompany.com/91620091/big-tech-is-cutewashing-its-ai-agents) of [AI Tamagotchis](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1002779/openai-dots-meta-muse-ai-agents-hardware-devices) (Meta’s [Muse](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-meta-muse-ai-agent-us-launch/) and OpenAI’s [dots](https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/)), while the OG assistants were reborn in new ways (Apple’s Siri AI, and Amazon’s Alexa+ in its [new tablet form](https://thenextweb.com/news/amazon-alexa-tablets-android-google-play-replace-fire)). Add Apple’s pending PervPods AirPods with cameras, and the surface for bot-to-bot brand experiences keeps getting bigger and bigger. **My Personal AI knows me better than any brand does** ------------------------------------------------------ Every brand I deal with holds one data set about me. Delta knows I fly to London regularly and which seat I like, and it has no idea if this trip is personal or business. My AI agent has the rest: my work, my plans, my history, and what I care about. That is the [connected context](https://thenewnew.is/p/connected-context) that brands lack. Brands build [walled gardens](https://thenewnew.is/p/when-followers-cant-follow-along) and social outposts for us to visit. Going forward, the next brand experience has to work inside **my** AI. [That’s the big idea in _The Outlier,_](https://www.opusagency.com/article/personal-ai-is-changing-what-attendees-bring-to-events) as we explore it through the realm of events: Events will keep their websites and apps, but the bigger opportunity is opening the event up to my personal AI. Picture this: I’m heading to a conference this fall, and my AI agent knows me but not the event. So the event offers a connector, a link that lets my agent read its information and act on it. I plug it in and ask what I should attend. My agent answers based on the deals I’m chasing and the projects due next month, finds the session I would have missed, spots a clash with a client call, and sorts it out. Swap the event for an airline, a retailer, or a bank, and that helpful personalization works the same way. **To lead in this megashift, brands bring in the AX** ----------------------------------------------------- So, which brands will become leaders in an era of Personal AI? The ones that open up and design for “agentic experience” (AX). The term comes from [Netlify’s CEO](https://biilmann.blog/articles/introducing-ax/), and when I first wrote about it in [The New B2Bs](https://thenewnew.is/p/the-new-b2bs), I described agents as “intelligent entities that filter choices, validate trust signals, and act before the user even taps a button.” Netlify’s [principles of AX](https://www.netlify.com/blog/the-principles-of-agent-experience-ax-designing-for-the-ai-driven-consumer/) start with treating the agent as an extension of the user, then make sure it can find what it needs and finish tasks on its own. This year, the CX trades are [calling AX the next evolution of UX](https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/user-experience-design-tips-for-the-agentic-cx-world/). Think of AX as UX for the agent in the middle. Can my agent understand what you offer, trust it, and get things done without me having to click through every screen? **For brand experience personalization, AX means designing the experience so my agent can do the personalizing.** **But wait… whose side will our Personal AIs really be on?** ------------------------------------------------------------ All of this assumes my AI agent works for me. Yet most of us will “rent” our agents from companies with their own interests, and sometimes the agent maker is also the store. Alexa+ is on an Amazon tablet, which also sells us things. [Meta says](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/) Muse won’t share your conversations with its ad systems (with a footnote: when Muse shops a website for you, that visit can still shape the ads you see). Google is already testing sponsored answers inside its AI results. So there will be conflicts of interest, yet, as with all things branding and commerce, trust remains at the center. Consumers _and_ their AI agents — me and my agent, you and your agent — will learn to share data with brands they trust, and for value they can easily recognize. (I hit the same tension when building [Conduct](https://thenewnew.is/i/212327349/the-conduct-quotient): people want businesses to recognize them, _and_ they want a say in what gets measured and who sees it.) **Bottom line:** **Our agents will personalize our future brand experiences, not the brands themselves.** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That’s the view after the coming 180. For business and brand leaders, personal AI is arriving in every customer’s pocket, sometimes with a cute face, and always with a fuller picture of that customer than any brand holds. The brands that open up first are the ones our agents will get to know, and the ones they’ll recommend. [ This post was included in _The New New_. Expore Issue 56 on **thenewnew.is** ](https://thenewnew.is/p/bring-your-own-personalization?ref=brentturner.is)