AX is the new UX

This graph is from an article in The Economist on 7/14/2025 (AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?). The first-order interpretation is that traditional search is imploding: people are increasingly preferring “answer engines” (aka AI chatbots) over search engines, which, as the article notes, “is undermining the economic bargain of the internet.” It is upending the SEO-SEM industry but more fundamentally it is reducing the need or desire for people to navigate to content sources (aka websites). Whereas humans are dramatically less likely to visit a website, AI agents are drastically more likely to be visiting (and scraping) said website: AX (Agent Experience) is the new UX if you want your website’s content and/or products to be part of an AI answer.

And then there is one outlier that should be concerning: the fastest-collapsing search category is Health. That opens up a whole universe of hurt: you can gather information using search and make your own opinion and/or ask a health professional; or you can outsource the information gathering and sensemaking to a confident-sounding AI chatbot. This may sounds like a small difference, whether people will follow a random link from, say, Google or follow the advice of an AI chatbot. But it reveals a hidden abdication of agency that I find worrisome, especially given that AI chatbots typically don’t push back: “What is the best GLP-1 I can take for obesity?” will get you an answer but your question will likely not be questioned: are you actually obese, do you have other health conditions, is a GLP-1 medication the best option? A sycophantic AI that can be confidently wrong is a dangerous tool. I am sure that specialized consumer-facing symptom checkers or diagnosis helpers will emerge and become much better, and interactive, but we are not there yet.