If you are using one of the new personal AI agents — Meta's Muse and Instinct, ChatGPT's Dots, Hark — you will marvel at what they can do. They hunt down the best fare, chase the refund, register the complaint, book the table. But there is a problem.
Major brands are starting to block them. TechCrunch reports that Amazon has begun shutting Meta's Muse out of its retail site, so the agent can no longer browse or buy from its catalogue. Delta told the publication it is guarding customers against unauthorized automated activity and has no arrangement that lets an outside agent book its flights. Early adopters complain of similar walls at Yelp, eBay, Zillow, Pizza Hut, Adidas and several airlines. Not everyone is closing ranks: Walmart has said it wants to stay open to agents.
This is the newest front in the AI trade. And, ironically, the resistance is not coming from humans afraid of the machines. It is coming from the biggest corporations you can imagine.
Why they are worried
An agent does not linger. It skips the banner, scrolls past the sponsored listing, declines the travel insurance and ignores "customers also bought." For companies that earn as much from your attention as from your purchase, an agent is a customer who cannot be sold to. So they block it.
What happens next
For a map of where this goes, we recommend the excellent analysis of Greg Isenberg, one of the people who has been on top of how humans and AI interact — and how humans can build a better business and a better life with the new technology. Counting Delta, Chase and Amazon among the blockers, he declared the war on agents has begun and sketched how it probably plays out, in nine stages:
Block. Companies shut agents out because agents skip the ads and the upsells.
Disguise. Agents learn to pass as humans, and an arms race begins.
Split. Firms that live on sales let agents in; firms that live on data charge for access; the giants build agents of their own.
The trust layer. A trusted middleman for agent identity and payments becomes the standard way through the door.
Defection. Companies that welcome agents start winning customers from the ones that block them.
Retreat. The blockers come back and let agents in — on their own terms.
Courtship. Everyone competes for agents with sharper prices, faster checkout and search optimization written for machines.
The ads return. Companies pay to be your agent's first recommendation.
Normal. The war ends, and selling to agents becomes as ordinary as having a website.
Our view
We believe all of this will happen rapidly — in weeks and months, not years.
But look at where it lands. The end state, in which the big brands pay to have your agent see their offer first, is somewhat retrograde. It is the search ad reborn, only now it is whispering in your agent's ear rather than sitting at the top of your screen. The great promise of a personal agent is that it works for you. Stage eight is the moment that promise gets put up for sale.
Which makes the most important question of the agent age a very human one: who does your agent really work for? Ask it. Expect it to tell you when a recommendation has been paid for. And watch which companies choose to compete on price and service rather than on who can buy their way to the front of the line.
With thanks to Greg Isenberg, whose predictions prompted this piece. Additional reporting from TechCrunch. Photo: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash, adapted by TheHumanTouch.ai.