• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, January 4, 2024

AI’s large language models like Chat GPT aren’t just going to make search as we know it go away. It’s going to do the same thing to websites and apps.

The concept behind most websites as we know them today were built as destinations for web browsers looking for something -- information, news or entertainment -- or wanting to do something, like buy products, register for contests or play games.

The content, use and navigation flow of most websites was designed by their owners to strike a balance between users getting what they want as simply, fast and conveniently as possible and site owners achieving their specific objectives, which might be brand building, lead generation, ad monetization, ecommerce sales or ego fulfillment.

Users navigate to most websites through search engines, direct navigation, links from other websites or clicking on ad banners, buttons or links. So, what happens when the front end of most user navigation is interaction with an AI model like Chat GPT, which runs code to help users satisfy their own objectives relative to finding, understanding or connecting with the news, information, product, person, company or other objective they seek?

AI models will “leapfrog” any prestructured content or utilities from others in the process, meaning that websites and apps as we know them  today, including most ecommerce sites and apps, are just intermediaries that are about to be dis-intermediated.

Much of what resides today in websites and apps will be structured as knowledge bases, optimized for AI model interaction. This will necessitate a significant shift in control. The AI models are  going to be working for the users (and their creators) and not the company, publisher, brand, merchant or utility seeking to benefit from user interactions or directly satisfy the users’ needs and wants.

This shift in control is going to massively disrupt most of the current business models on the web. Like the line from the Ernest Hemingway novel that answers the question “How did you go bankrupt?,”  it is likely to happen two ways: “Gradually, then suddenly."

Everyone will be impacted. Are you getting ready, and doing it fast enough?