Assuming it actually works and doesn’t hallucinate nonstop, imo it’s going to kill off the “humans browse a website and order something” in the same way e-commerce killed off catalog and phone ordering systems.
Something about all this feels a bit backwards though, ultimately all these websites have some underlying API they're hitting. The "right" thing would be to just expose that API directly, and then an LLM could convert user input into a request that hits the endpoint. I think that was supposed to be the vision of Siri and such, but it never materialized because even if 3rd party integration was feasible natural understanding wasn't cracked yet.
Now that we finally have good natural language understanding, instead of executing on that vision, we're going backwards and having agents navigate websites as humans do?? If it does take off, the natural end-point is going to be that pages might have an alternate version that's simplified to make it easier for such agents to do their thing, just as web pages adapted for mobile formats.
100%. You absolutely get it, and also the implications, and also the outcome.
Humans will more and more rely on their AI assistants to take care of mundane things for them. If your site is difficult for an AI assistant to use (due to anti-bot behavior, or an overly complex flow that confuses LLMs, or whatever) your business will suffer. It's gonna be glorious if every retailer starts publishing a swagger API to facilitate automated transactions.
Maybe check what Turnstile is/does before commenting? Cloudflare only needs you to solve captchas periodically and then they use your browser fingerprint to classify you as a human accessing a site.
Towards the rest of your comment:
I don't understand how this is a bad thing?
As far as I know, TripAdvisor gets a commission on all sales, so do most e-commerce providers as that's how e-commerce works?
I don't understand your argument.
Exactly how e-commerce killed off so many holdouts that insisted on in-store/catalog/phone purchases when the internet was growing.
I can see it driving purchasing decisions, but I can't see it killing off the actual shop sites? Because the shop is getting a _comission_ on the sale.
I'm getting an ever growing vibe off HN that for a website where a ton of people work on tech, or even in e-commerce serving content to people, they seem to have an awful understanding of consumer behavior.
If your site doesn't support/allow agentic bots, it will be similar to not accepting Visa or Mastercard. Yes, cash-only business is a thing. But it's suicide to make that your only payment option for most retail businesses.
If you assume that every good or service can be infinitely commoditized, then yes, perhaps this will hurt businesses that use this kind of technology.
Realistically though this just isn't the case and there are a lot of products, commodities and services that are unique in their own right and dont't have that kind of competition. So your Visa and Mastercard example is completely moot.
For example, you wouldn't really tell this agent to get you "the best rated shooter game on steam" because that's just not how purchasing decisions in gaming are made.
And on that point, from reading their announcement this sounds more like what critics of AI have been talking about, are you seriously going to automate something that gives you _pleasure_? Like selecting a game that you want to play? Wtf? Because in the scenario youre describing, thats exactly whats happening.
Illusion of choice. Think about how Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, iOS Appstore, Google Play Store, and even your example -- Steam -- provide recommendation to users. The overwhelming majority of people are already letting an algorithm make decisions for them. Acting like this is where people will suddenly draw the line is amusing.
"Play a new action movie that I'll enjoy" -- "Taken 4 now playing..."