Question: What Happens When AI Reads the Internet for Us?
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Have you heard?
Unless life has been lifing and honestly, fair enough if it has, you’ve probably seen the growing conversation around AI search, Google summaries, and the idea that websites are getting “scraped alive.”
In simple terms: AI tools are increasingly pulling information from websites, summarising it for users, and answering questions directly, often without people ever clicking through to the original site.
I recently watched a video by Kevin Powell (https://youtu.be/Xpk7soxvOMY?si=MCmHffx3iyog5MFQ) discussing AI summaries, search engines, and the future of websites. It raised a question that many businesses, creators, and marketers are now quietly (or in panic mode) asking themselves:
If AI can summarise our websites without users ever visiting them… what happens to websites?
What happens to SEO? What happens to ads? And honestly? The panic is understandable. For years, we built businesses around a very specific digital formula: Traffic = Visibility = Sales
But the model is shifting in real time. As if life wasn’t already changing enough.
Fact! AI is increasingly becoming the middleman between people and information. It reads websites, summarises content, answers questions instantly, and in many cases, users never visit the original source at all.
Studies are already showing that AI-generated summaries can reduce click-through traffic to websites significantly. So where does that leave businesses, creators, publishers, and brands?
(read these two for source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/ and https://www.chiefmarketer.com/googles-ai-summary-decreases-retailer-web-traffic/)
Personally, I don’t think this is the death of websites. I think it’s the evolution of what websites are for. Websites may no longer exist primarily to “rank on Google.”
Instead, they may become:
Digital catalogues
Trust hubs
Brand homes
Community anchors
Spaces where people confirm who you are after discovering you elsewhere
And maybe , just maybe, this shift pushes us back toward the things people relied on long before search engines dominated everything:
Word of mouth
Networking
Referrals
Community reputation
Print media
Billboards
Events
Instore catalogues and brochures
Newspapers
Human connection
Ironically, some of the “old ways” are becoming relevant again. For example, did you know that there are other search engines that are still based on the “Old School Search Engine Concept”. I bet you remember now!
There are still search engines built around more traditional discovery models, including:
And beyond search engines, there’s something even more powerful: People.
Communities. Conversations. Recommendations. Reputation.
We underestimate how much business still comes from someone simply saying:
“I know a guy or girl that can help.”
This might be too early to say but instead of panicking, maybe this is the moment businesses need to remind them of the need to diversify how they are discovered online.
If your entire digital footprint relies solely on one platform, one algorithm, or one search engine, this may be the time to rethink, reposition, and explore different strategies (you might need to hire back you’re Marketing and Comms team).
A new norm is now here, the future of online business and digital marketing is changing almost daily, that is a fact. A fact that will force almost all businesses to question their marketing and digital strategy
But perhaps the better question is not: “What happens after Google?”
Maybe the better question is: “What worked before Google and which human behaviours never actually disappeared?”. And then take it from there.
And my response to the question, “What Happens When AI Reads the Internet for Us?”
My natural reaction is to resist it a little. Not because I am anti-AI, far from it. Most of us already interact with AI daily in ways we barely even notice anymore. And honestly, I find a lot of it useful. Convenient, even.
But there is something deeply human about exploration. About searching. About clicking through strange corners of the internet. About comparing perspectives.About discovering something unexpected while looking for something else.
If we allow or align with systems created by technology to removes our ability or, even our desire to explore for ourselves, then what exactly are we becoming?
Yes, AI can save time. Yes, summaries are efficient. But human curiosity was never meant to be efficient.
And if online discovery becomes reduced to a single generated response, controlled by a handful of powerful tech companies deciding what is “most relevant” for us, it starts feeling less like innovation and more like digital gatekeeping dressed up as convenience.
That is where I pause. I cannot be the only one thinking that convenience should assist human thinking, not replace it. And maybe that is the real conversation we should all start having.
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