Adding ssh keys to ssh-agent fails w/ running agent, environment variables set

[SSH] "Could not open a connection to your authentication agent". error

I am trying to add ssh keys into my ssh agent. I start by making sure that the ssh-agent is running.

exec ssh-agent bash

I make sure that ssh-agent is running.

ps axu | grep [s]sh

and get the following

root 1562 ... ssh-agent bash

The env variables are set correctly.

SSH_AGENT_PID=1562

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-699iHAxuK4xX/agent.1561

However when I try to add the private key using

sudo ssh-add ~/.ssh/peter-key

I get the ssh error

Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.

I have tried the suggestions on stackoverflow and serverfault but nothing.

Note: I am running a linux machine on one of the free tier AWS machines with ubuntu. My instance's security group allow (temporarily) all incoming and outgoing ssh connections from any IP address. Anyone know what the error could be?