We're discussing essentially a failure case here. They wasted their time unsuccessfully trying to get media attention.

Meta does have an AI support assistant, which presumably also failed them.

> AI agents create works are great from a consumer side.

> Big companies has been using this to create frictions to disincentivize people for things they should deserve or the law requires them to do.

> ...

> If companies can make you talk with AI, I should be able to use AI to talk with them.

Not necessarily. Big companies always have more resources than consumers. If consumers use AI to bypass the deliberate frictions, new ones will be introduced. AI will just cause them to remove the paths were a little persistence and not taking no for an answer was a tool for a consumer to get a desirable outcome.

The logical response from companies seeing a hit to their bottom line will be to remove the path of least resistance: e.g. L1 support agents no longer empowered to provide a courtesy discount/refund without additional approvals, gym memberships going back to a certified letter requirement, etc.

Making the overall experience worse for everyone in the future.

Who's going to be able to afford the full cost of the tokens when this plays out? I think there's going to be a pretty big bifurcation of capability between the average consumer (and even small business) and the giant corporations who have access to all the tools.