AI Briefing: Autonomous browsing and shopping agents bring new opportunities and (bot) risks 

The influx of AI agents is quickly creating new ways to autonomously browse the internet and shop online. However, the feature also poses potential challenges for publishers, advertisers, and e-commerce companies — including new problems with how to deal with bot traffic.

Last week, Google debuted a range of new features as part of its release of Gemini 2.0, including a preview of a new agent called Project Mariner that offers to help people with everything from researching and booking trips to shopping for a range of other products.

One demo developed in collaboration with Etsy showed Project Mariner helping to research and buy paint supplies based on the kind of art someone would want to create. Google also pointed out it wouldn’t purchase products without first getting human approval and that it can’t autonomously browse in the background. Although Mariner was designed as a Chrome browser feature, that could change depending on the outcome of its search antitrust trial. 

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