What you should do when AI agents visit websites instead of humans.
Above: I’m speaking on this topic at a conference near you (TED AI, Techcrunch Disrupt, AI Infra and more), photo from Digitalk, Sophia Bulgaria 2024.
In the next 24 months, AI agents (autonomous apps who serve humans) will revolutionize how we access information online. Instead of humans manually browsing websites, these AI agents will scour the internet, find what we need, and even perform tasks—all through a single, user-friendly interface. Humans won’t need to visit websites.
The Internet is a Poor User Experience:
- Did you know Americans spend approximately 7 hours per day on the internet? How much of that time is effective versus wasted on tasks?
- The current internet experience is lacking. It’s filled with ads, inconsistent user interfaces, and excessive forms to complete tasks
Fix: AI Agents Help Humans:
- AI agents (autonomous applications) will work tirelessly on our behalf, sifting through the internet, gathering data, and even performing simple tasks, which will mature into complex problem solving.
- AI agents will bring all this information for the human into a single, unified interface that caters to our preferred format and modality (text, voice, video, VR, whatever).
- Humans don’t need to surf the web. The importance of fancy web designs for humans and traditional user interfaces will diminish.
If You Worked in Web2, You’re Poised for Success:
- Ad models and marketing strategies as we know them become an anachronism.
- Related History: Remember how Web 2.0 changed everything by shifting focus from websites to also include distributed social media?
- The same thing is happening again, but instead of replicating content on social networks, we’ll need to create streamlined content for agents.
AI Agents Have Shortcomings:
- Right now, early AI agents are simulating human click paths and using LLMs to fill out forms to complete tasks. It’s error-prone and slow but will be fixed.
- As website owners realize via data that the most common visitor is an AI agent—not a human—they will need to shift their strategy.
How Innovative Websites Should Respond:
- The key will be for website owners to create an Agent API that provides AI agents with quick, easy access to information—rather than simulating human click paths.
- The reality is that most website owners, whether at small businesses or large enterprises, aren’t prepared for this shift. As a result, we’ll see new third-party startups emerge to broker this for website owners.
- Also, incumbent CMS platforms like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Acquia, Sitecore, and Adobe will likely start offering these AI-friendly APIs, and enterprises will roll out custom solutions to appease the buyer-side AI agents.
The Bottom Line: The future is all about catering to AI agent surrogates, not human eyeballs and clicks. Websites must pivot from attracting humans to empowering AI agents to get the job done. Get ready for this change—don’t get left behind.
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