That brands and advertising are the cancer of the information ecosystem of the Internet is something that we have been knowing too long. The manipulation of the search results through SEO, the intoxication of the content to maximize visibility, and the prioritization of commercial interests above the relevance and quality are part of the usual landscape of the web for decades. They are basically what has ruined the experience of use of the network.
Now, with the meteoric ascent of the chatbots Of artificial intelligence such as Chatgpt, Claude or Gemini, we are about to see the same process repeat: the colonization of artificial intelligence by the brands. And, if we do not avoid it, it could be the beginning of the end of one of the most promising technological evolutions of our time.
The evidence of the transition is overwhelming. Chatgpt has officially replaced Google Search for many people, far beyond simple isolated cases. Gartner predicts that the volume of consultations to search engines will fall 25% by 2026 due to the use of chatbots and virtual agents, a room of traffic in just two years. Users simply prefer the direct, elaborate and contextualized response that provides artificial intelligence, in the face of the tedious process of examining links and separating them from Google ads.
The trend is fully documented, and the discussion about the future of something as crucial as the search on the network tends to focus on whether Google will be able to adapt to this new reality. The evolution from consultations to prompts It is redefining the entire landscape of the search. Users are leaving Google in favor of options based on artificial intelligence due to their greater precision, efficiency and personalized experience.
What is happening now? Exactly the foreseeable: advertising agencies, marketing gurus and brands are already landing in mass to try to manipulate these new tools. According to an interesting article in the Financial Times, «Brands target AI chatbots as users switch from Google search«companies such as Profound or Brandtech are creating systems to “optimize” the appearance of brands in the responses of the chatbotsmeasuring “feelings” of the models towards brands, and offering “consultancies” to improve their “visibility.” Reread that phrase and replace the quoted euphemisms with the bad word that you estimate more timely: we talk about the same ecosystem of disgusting lies based on the espionage we know about advertising onlinereplicated for artificial intelligence.
In other words: let’s prepare to see how artificial intelligence, instead of being a source of information with possible errors, but in principle impartial, reasonably rigorous and based on the quality of the data, it becomes a space completely colonized by commercial interests. Exactly as the web, exactly like search engines.
This process is not only undesirable: it is devastating. The strength of generative artificial intelligence systems is in its ability to filter noise, to offer evidence -based responses and quality criteria, not on the opportunistic manipulation of the best bidder. Allowing brands to put their dirty hands in artificial intelligence systems means condemning them to repeat the same vices that ruined the website: the overload of irrelevant content, the loss of confidence in the responses, the normalization of espionage and the corruption of the data.
The commercial colonization of artificial intelligence will also be much more insidious than that of the traditional search engine. Because while in Google we could, at least in theory, choose between different links, in an artificial intelligence environment we often receive a single response, which many take as true renouncing their critical sense. If that response is contaminated by commercial interests, we will not even be aware of being manipulated. There will be no links to review or explicit alternatives to consider: we will simply believe that “artificial intelligence said it.”
It is essential, therefore, to establish clear limits: artificial intelligence algorithms must be protected from the direct influence of trademarks and commercial interests. We cannot allow the next great technological evolution to be perverted before even reaching maturity. Artificial intelligence companies must resist the temptation to finance selling privileged access to the models, although market pressures and shareholders push them to it.
It is not a matter of technical purism or naive idealism. It is a matter of survival: if we let the chatbots Of artificial intelligence they become advertising shop windows, we will see each other in the dark future in which we will have killed the golden egg chicken before even seeing it grow. And this time, we will not have a “next big thing” to migrate.
Let’s keep the artificial intelligence clean. Let’s keep it free. Let’s keep it ours.
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