• by Ricardo Diaz , September 26, 2025

Online searching behavior is changing in the era of artificial intelligence. A fundamental shift is underway, and it’s threatening the entire internet economy.

For years, the underpinning of the digital world has been a simple transaction: Content creators made valuable information and entertainment, and we, the users, "paid" for it by viewing ads on their websites. This model is fueled by clicks and traffic and has built the online world as we know it. Now, this model is breaking, and the culprit is AI.

AI-powered search engines, like Perplexity and Chat GPT, are designed to deliver direct, synthesized answers, eliminating the need to click through to a single website. We’re transitioning from "searching" to simply "getting," and while it’s a better user experience, it's also gutting the online economy.

Devices like voice assistants, AR glasses, AI pins, and AI bots utilize AI search and are contributing to the widespread adoption of AI search engines.  A new Pew Research study shows users are less likely to click on result links when a Google search page includes an AI summary. Some analysts predict organic search traffic could plummet by as much as 50% by 2028.

Fewer clicks mean fewer impressions and less revenue for creators. It's a direct hit to the journalists, bloggers, and creatives who have built their livelihoods on the currency of our attention.

In the age of AI-generated "slop," authentic, human-created content is more important than ever. Both humans and AI need new original content. We need human creativity, rigorous journalism, and expert insights not only to further culture but also to train these models and to reflect and shape our society.

The internet has historically struggled to compensate for original content.  As consumers, we have a role to play. When we use answer engines or any AI-powered search, we can make a conscious choice to click on the cited links to support creators.

New AI-native ad networks are emerging, with companies like Perplexity already rolling out sponsored placements within their AI-generated answers. This is an opportunity to build more equitable compensation model from the ground up. But this new paradigm will also be a game of  “answer engine optimization," where brands fight for a mention within an AI's response.

This is more than just a new advertising channel. It's actually a restructuring of how information is monetized online. We are at a critical juncture. One path leads to a more soulless internet, where the incentive to create goes away due to a lack of compensation. The other path, however, could lead to a more equitable system. New revenue-sharing models are emerging, where AI platforms compensate creators. The Really Simple Licensing (RSL) is an open content licensing standard for web publishers to control how AI crawlers use their content.

Moving forward, we must decide what kind of internet we want to have. Will it be one dominated by a few powerful AI gatekeepers, or one that continues to foster a diverse ecosystem of creators? If we don’t find a way to fairly compensate content creators, we risk a future where the internet becomes a shallow echo chamber of AI-generated slop, devoid of the human ingenuity that once made it great.