What the Rise of AI Agents Means for the Future of Websites

What does the rise of AI agents mean for websites?

In an interesting Microsoft blog post on the Future of AI by Marco Casalaina (linked in the comments), the range of interventions website publishers might need to make to best handle AI and agent traffic is something anyone with a website their business relies upon should probably read.

As you sit back and watch a virtual browser controlled by ChatGPT Agent mode or even Microsoft Copilot Actions work on your behalf there is an important consideration. Unless my request is specifically to go buy something, or book something that brings value to a business on the other side, virtually every tool available to those website owners to monetize their work has been abstracted away.

This issue isn't to do with the right technology set-up to allow the AI to interact with the site, but with the way we have set-up the economy of the Internet suddenly being disrupted by AI.

On top of this, opening up sites to AI isn't just about making them available to individual and specific requests. There is a growing pool of stories of website owners being utterly inundated by AI-related traffic, increasing host costs, while generating no revenue through traditional means.

The technical challenge is how to ensure your web content is available to AI. The societal challenge is how to rework the information economy that has grown up on the Internet during the last 30 years so that the free flow of knowledge still works for all the participants involved.

How is your web use changing in the AI age? If you're a website owner, how are you preparing to embrace the new ways users will access your content?

Posted on Linkedin on 08/03/2025 -> View Linkedin post here