The internet is shifting from human attention to autonomous AI agents

The useful part

Business Insider Following the money, work, and power reshaped by AI Know a rising star in robotics? His company recently put a new product online but hadn't done a big launch or any marketing. Back in early 2025, I described a vision of a " dark internet " where humans will be drowned out by agents accessing and using online information, widgets, and tools all by themselves.

How it works

• Meta recently launched a personal agent called Muse, which got busy scouring the web and calling customer service on behalf of millions of users.
• Instinct, an agent that lives in your text messages, is performing similar feats.
• In the workplace, coding agents are churning out millions of lines of code faster than any human software engineer.
• Some of these bots have broken out of online testing environments, sparking new predictions of AI doom and calls for an industry slowdown.
• Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you're searching for what matters.

What to take from it

"Humans will be a rounding error on the internet, not because human traffic goes down, but that's just how fast we're seeing non-human traffic grow," Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert said earlier this year. Joseph Devoy, founder of startup Tempo, posted on X that he saved thousands of dollars by uploading his auto insurance policy to Muse and asking the agent to find a better rate with identical coverage. Yesterday I uploaded my auto insurance policy to Meta @Muse and asked for a better rate with identical coverage.

Example or evidence

• Since Meta's Muse launched last week, early users have been recounting stories of the agent going out on the web to find and negotiate new subscriptions, insurance policies, and other cost savings.
• Other users say Muse negotiated a lower internet bill, found forgotten subscriptions, and even spotted an Adobe payment that had somehow been tied to someone else's account.
• Some users have posted examples of Muse inventing information during phone calls or making mistakes that humans had to fix.
• If enough human users sign up for new agentic services and tools, businesses may have no choice but to do business with bots.

Details worth keeping

Google launches Gemini 4 Argon to reclaim the AI frontier ChatGPT's ads are a lot like San Francisco's infamous billboards Microsoft's Copilot chief opens up about the AI future he fears most The internet belongs to the AI agents now By Alistair Barr You're currently following this author! I visited the CEO of a major startup in SF last week. Within a week or two, it got at least a million signups.

Related coverage

• Fortune: The Big Men of AI agree that the frontier must be paced but they do not have the incentive to tie their own hands. Others do.
• Spinsucks: Gini Dietrich takes you inside the rise of AI agents as the new gatekeepers—and why, this time, no budget on earth can buy your brand's way in.
• Fastcompany: For better or worse, AI agents are now a part of the workforce.