Introduction
The web is turning into bot vs bot: AI agents negotiate and respond to each other while humans step to the sidelines.
Brief summary from a journalistic source: online life is shifting from people-to-people to machine-to-machine. Buyer and seller agents will haggle; SEO gives way to GEO; sites expose human- and bot-facing versions; scraping disputes and unclear liability rise. Source: Axios.
Context
The human network became software-mediated; next is an agent-first layer. In e-commerce, prices can personalize and update in microseconds beyond human cognition, pushing buyers to deploy their own agents against sellers’ pricing bots.
"We invested all of this energy into optimizing websites for human user experience, and now there are all of these nonhuman users who have an entirely different set of needs."
Linda Tong, CEO / Webflow
Bot vs bot: signals to watch
Key signs: GEO replaces SEO with bot-readable pages; risk of colluding trading bots; ransomware chats on both sides; dual sites and apps (human and agent interfaces); friction over AI scraping; new tools to block or filter aggressive bots.
- Traffic: a large share of visits is already automated
- Assistants: chatbots could speak more daily words than all humans
- Observability: you’ll need bots to watch the bots
"In a few years, you're going to have hundreds or thousands of agents on your network... until something goes wrong and you have to play Sherlock Holmes."
Jeremy Burton, CEO / Observe
Risks, limits and what’s next
Bot vs bot arms races can add costly automated friction with high software and energy spend. Legal responsibility for agent failures remains murky, as providers and users may blame each other. Abundant funding can accelerate this path even if markets don’t want it.
"By training AIs to fight and defeat other AIs we can perhaps preserve a healthy balance in the new ecosystem."
Neal Stephenson, Author
FAQ
What does "bot vs bot" mean for today’s web?
An ecosystem where AI agents transact on pricing, content and services, reducing direct human involvement.
How will e-commerce change with AI pricing and bot vs bot?
Pricing becomes hyper-dynamic and personalized; buyers and sellers deploy agents to negotiate automatically.
What is GEO and why does it replace SEO in AI search?
Generative Engine Optimization tunes content to be a chatbot’s first answer, not just rank on Google.
Is a bot vs bot web more efficient or more costly?
It can boost efficiency but also add automated friction and notable energy/software costs.
Who is liable when an AI agent goes wrong?
Liability is unclear; responsibility between users and providers is still being worked out.
How can sites defend against aggressive bots in AI search?
With anti-scraping rules, open-source tools and access controls, though the arms race is intensifying.