Your next customer is an AI agent
AI agents represent a major shift in web traffic as automated bots act on behalf of users to complete tasks. Platforms are responding by either blocking these agents, charging crawlers, or partnering with them for automated checkouts through systems like Shop Pay. However, online video largely lacks these permission controls and remains invisible to agents.
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Rise of personal AI agents
Over half of web traffic is now generated by AI bots, with new personal AI agents such as Muse, Grokbot, and Instinct actively completing tasks and making purchases on behalf of users.
Amazon blocks Meta's Muse while partners emerge
Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent over unauthorised access concerns, while Shopify, Walmart, and other retailers embrace agent partnerships and Stripe Link integration.
Video content invisibility to AI agents
Online video creators lack permission controls like allow, charge, or block, leaving video libraries largely inaccessible to AI agents unless scanned via AgentTV.
Transcript
More than half of web traffic now is AI bots. Cloudflare measured 57.4% of page requests. And newest personal AI agents don't just read the page and give you an answer, they use it to complete the task on your behalf. For 30 years, the deal with websites was simple: companies serve the pages, crawlers index them for search, and people read them. The new personal agents break that flow. Grokbot, Muse, Instinct are eager helpers who don't just visit the site, but they read the listing, compare the options, suggest the purchase, and then complete the task or booking for you.
The web was built for humans, but now there's been an 8 times increase in login pages by AI agents just this year who work for humans. That leaves every site with the same question as Cloudflare laid out: allow the agents in, charge them, or block them. One of the most popular personal agents, Muse by Meta, launched 2 weeks ago, and almost 1 million downloads in the first week. It's still number one in the App Store. Amazon had asked Meta to remove Amazon from the Muse shopping experience first. Meta declined, and on Sunday, the block went up, so users now just see a pop-up notice for unauthorized use.
Amazon argues that Meta never said Muse would shop on behalf of the user, and the Muse AI agent doesn't identify itself as it uses customers' credentials and impersonates the human on their site. Meta's response was that Muse can't see anyone's passwords or payment details and only does what the human tells them to do. Next day, Shopify CEO posted about the partnership with Muse for agentic checkout with Shop Pay across all Shopify stores. Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, Expedia announced partnerships. And when there's no direct deal, Stripe Link gives Muse, Grokbot, and other agents their own wallet with one-time cards for easy payments on any site.
Every platform is making this call now. The options are, as Cloudflare laid out, allow, charge, or block. As the website owners and agent platforms keep arguing to protect their business models, I run my Grokbot traffic through my Mac. To the pages like Amazon, it looks like me, not a bot. So the numbers of AI agents probably are even higher. Now look at video. Online media has none of it. There is no allow, charge, or block for your library. No permission layer, no users' data, and no way to get paid. Your footage is locked to a platform and has to follow their rules.
In most cases, videos aren't even accessible to AI agents at all, and you don't get a say. If you publish videos, you can check what agents can actually see in your library at agentcdn.com/visibility.