Why the front end as we know it will disappear

Last week, I went on a short trip to see extended family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The trip was entirely organized by AI.

All I did was send an AI agent a voice message via WhatsApp, telling it I had an existing booking with United that would take me from EWR to SFO. I asked the agent to change the booking to Tulsa, that I needed to arrive before 4 p.m. on Monday, and that I also needed a hotel.

Twenty minutes later, everything was booked. The only thing left for me to do was enter my credit card details through a secure interface. (You can also give it a preloaded debit card.) Monday morning, I got up at 6 a.m. The agent had offered to arrange airport transportation for me, but I still felt capable enough to call an Uber myself.

It had checked me into the flights, booked me a window seat in the very back—my preferred choice—and kept me updated about delays and gate changes. After two days in Tulsa, I decided it was time to return to California but was shocked by the prices for same-day flights back to SF. Instinct found me a flight from Tulsa to San Jose, a $300 price difference from the SFO flight. Once again, all I had to do was send a voice message. “Just say the word,” as Claude would aptly put it.

I have no idea which AI model is behind the agent that did all the work, whether it’s Fabel, Sol, Astra, Kimi, or ZAI. And honestly, I don’t care. I have fully surrendered to the AI overlord in my WhatsApp. Not only have I given it unvetted access to my credit card, email, Google Drive, and iCloud. No, it also has my home address, my date of birth, my passport details, and my live location via Find My. The latter is crucial so it can remind me to take my laundry out of the washing machine and load it into the dryer when I come back home.

Since the trip to Tulsa, the agent has bought me a new shelf for my closet, unsubscribed me from $1,500 worth of subscriptions, and arranged a handyman for my apartment in Berlin after I forwarded it a concerned message from my tenant.

I am now at a point where, during mundane household chores like loading the dishwasher or changing my bedsheets, I catch myself thinking, “Hey, can you please change the sheets for me?” We are not quite there yet with robots, but we might as well be in the coming decade.

In the meantime, something else will happen: the front end as we know it will disappear. I will no longer have to scroll through endless flight-path combinations, scavenge for hotels that have a decent gym by diving two pages deep into Google Maps reviews, or ordering any kind of help around the house.

Some things will of course stay. Social media won’t disappear because of AI. I don’t quite see the appeal of an agent sending me a digest of my Twitter or LinkedIn feed via Whatsapp.