Personal AI agents are arriving on websites built for people, and many sites are turning them away. A MIT Technology Review analysis published Monday, October 19, argues that the effort to let them in could leave the web worse for the humans still using it directly.

The agents went mainstream with apps such as OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse. MIT Technology Review reports Muse was downloaded 5 million times in its first month, and agentic web traffic tripled from August to September.

The welcome has been mixed. Citing TechCrunch, the magazine said people have had trouble sending their agents to sites ranging from Pizza Hut to Yelp, which doesn’t allow AI to book restaurant reservations. Amazon has blocked Muse’s agents and is fighting the startup Perplexity in court to block its agents too. A judge recently ruled in Perplexity’s favor, and Amazon’s appeal argues that agents threaten its advertising business by making it harder to tell ads seen by humans from ads served to bots.…