• by Laurie Sullivan , November 5, 2025

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has warned that large language models (LLMs) may replace humans in consuming the internet - suggesting that the ad model estimated by the IAB to generate $398 billion this year could “fall apart.”

He pointed to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as the challenge, because much of the world's businesses have relied on this internet model since 1994. It provides users quick with access to information.

“If web pages are all read by LLMs, then people ask the LLM for the data and the LLM just produces the result, the whole ad-based business model of the web starts to fall apart,” Berners-Lee told FT Future of AI Summit attendees in London on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times (FT).

Berners-Lee did not specifically share ideas on how a brand's advertisement will come into play when confronted by an AI agent, but it’s clear that he believes AI poses a threat to the advertising-based model that Google, Microsoft, and Meta have developed to become trillion-dollar businesses.

Berners-Lee added that advertising relies on people reading web pages and the ads serving up close by, but companies like DoubleVerify have begun to prepare for a time when those ads will be viewed by bots rather than humans.

DoubleVerify is preparing to release an AI agentic verification service that will begin offering "an initial series of capabilities" by year-end, with more becoming available in 2026.

But Berners-Lee appears to be ready for society to press the “reset button” on the internet to alleviate some of the issues such as ad blocking and monitoring. During the conference he said, “we need to replace [the model] with something else.”

During the past 36 years, approximately, Berners-Lee has watched the WWW evolve from its beginning with only him using the invention to about 5.5 billion Internet users. As of 2024, there were 8.142 billion people in the world, according to a Google search.

The Scientist reported that this invention has revolutionized the world, enabling people to find information and helping companies generate revenue, develop and serve ads, and many believe life today would be unimaginable without it.

Berners-Lee says this technology faces a growing list of problems, including misinformation and manipulation.

Mark Surman, president of the web browser Mozilla, also attended the summit. During his presentation, he said the ad-based search model is “at a potential crossroads” and urged people to not “let a good crisis go to waste," suggesting that it is a good time to rethink advertising across the web.