AI agents need a web of their own

Watching AI navigate around websites designed for humans highlights the hurdles we must surmount and suggests a new web is on the way

- Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro and, much to his own surprise, something of an AI enthusiast. Send em dashes to [e-mail]. X @bazzacollins

Amid all the hoopla surrounding agentic AI, it's easy to lose sight of just how astonishing this technology is. Genuinely stop-and-stare stuff.

As part of a guide I'm currently writing, I asked ChatGPT to conduct an online search for details of my paternal great-grandparents. I gave it the full names of my grandparents, their dates of birth and death, and let the AI get on with it.

Without any direct prompting, it opened multiple browser windows and started searching various genealogy sites for records of my ancestors. It found the relevant fields to enter names and dates of birth, clicked the correct buttons and used drop-down menus to narrow searches down to the relevant dates, all while providing a running text commentary on what it was doing, even what it was “thinking” as it was doing it.