2 minute read / Jan 5, 2025 /
Back to Text: How AI Might Reverse Web Design
AI saved me from cookie banners, travel insurance popups, car rental quotes, & the special frustration of comparing flight options across tabs.
I downloaded an open-source agent, tweaked it & watched it find the cheapest flights for my trip from San Francisco to Newark.
One-Way Trip (12 Jan 2025)
| Airline | Departure | Arrival | Duration | Stops | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 5:14 AM from SFO | 3:44 PM at EWR | 7 hr 30 min | 1 (DEN) | $297 |
| United Airlines | 10:45 AM from SFO | 7:26 PM at EWR | 5 hr 41 min | Nonstop | $474 |
Return Trip (18 Jan 2025)
| Airline | Departure | Arrival | Duration | Stops | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 5:14 AM from SFO | 3:44 PM at EWR | 7 hr 30 min | 1 (DEN) | $297 |
| United Airlines | 6:38 AM from SFO | 5:33 PM at EWR | 7 hr 55 min | 1 (DEN) | $422 |
In the video, the robot “sees” the page, determines the next step, errs by clicking on an SEO optimized link, backtracks, & then ultimately extracts the answer from the chaff.
If I received a quick chat with this & a button that asked me which to book, I’m certain I’d never return to the travel agency’s website. And I’d ask it to do the same for me elsewhere.
- Email: Please suggest replies.
- News: Show me the top 10 news stories about the topics I care about.
- Social Media: Suggest replies & summarize the trending & spicy.
- Grocery Shopping: Same as last week.
- Sports & Stock Updates: Niners & the Nasdaq.
- Book Recommendations: Any new spy novels and notable macroeconomics books?
Here’s the twist. During the last 20 years, we’ve focused on improving websites for humans with complex design, single page apps, & complex Javascript. We’ve achieved the newspaper from Harry Potter.
But AI thrives on simplicity : pure text. Microsoft recently released a library to convert all kinds of documents to AI-friendly text : PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, images & audio.
The better the AI performs, the fewer websites I’ll visit.
What if the future of the web is exactly how it started : pure text websites? But text for robots, not text for humans.