Author and media entrepreneur John Battle said, “I think search is going to be fragmented into a million pieces, and integrated into all kinds of interfaces, not just one monolithic centralized place, which Google has become.”
But if every website acted like a faithful friend, it would become even more difficult to distinguish between good information and bad information, he warned.
“Would you trust an AI travel agent to get you the right deal? No,” Battle said.
“I want my own ‘genie’, my ‘agent’ to interact with the website. If it’s just me against the AI, I’m going to lose. I need one on my side.”
Battle’s “Genie” digests the user’s information from a smartphone, computer, TV or car and helps respond and perform tasks for the user in online life.
The bot, powered by personal data, will buy you the best vacuum cleaner according to your tastes, habits and current promotions, skipping a long and tedious search
The AI personal assistant would have to come, for a fee, to ensure that personal data was not harvested and sold to the highest bidder for advertising or online tracking, as it is on social media.
Startups like Replika, Anima and others are already moving into the companion AI space.