alt Hacker NewsUnited Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelers
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I mean, they can try. AI agents have computer use now so no website will actually be able to disambiguate between humans and AI anymore, so I can indeed tell my agent to book me a ticket.
Too late already did it
I think this is for not replacing those auto investigation downstream platform like Trip.com by 'cheap' agent like Agent.
a dying breed. somebody should make an "agentic airline"
How about I'll stop using AI bots to book flights if United stops using chatbots for customer "support"?
I'm bearing on the impacts of AI in general but maybe, just maybe, it might be the death blow to the demand pricing that is so rife in booking airline tickets? Customers hate it. People know that a given flight might cost $200 or $1000 depending on what time of your day you try and book, whether you try and book on a weekday or weekend, if you're booking from a corporate IP address and so on. None of these things have anything to do with how full the plane is. They're all UX anti-patterns to ask "how much money do you have?" before giving you a price. And it needs to die.
Airlines better get used to this because this is an arms race they cannot possibly win. Good.
I'm surprised they haven't started restricting sales by third parties entirely yet (yes I know that's not related to AI agents).
Some of the points they raise, I do think are cause for concern as it relates to potential legal liabilities... but I don't see how they could possibly restrict AI usage meaningfully, besides just getting the big popular groups to assist in limiting their own services somehow, which doesn't solve the issue entirely of course, especially with local LLM usage on the rise.
I littery stopped using websites apart from sites like this one or reddit. I use AI for everything else. Also for booking stuff. It's the future. Website UI will eventually become obsolete. Companies will provide API endpoint for ai agents that either work with text or realtime on demand UIs. This action is putting you in a yahoo like position.
yet when they strand me 1000miles from my destination I cant get through to a human due to an LLM. Yeh no. fuck them. This airline is trash
Everyone is suggesting ways to circumvent this. But at the end of the day, they will just raise prices for everyone if agents affect their profits or risk.
Tell me you don't know how technology works without telling me.
Tell me you have no idea how technology works without telling me.
Meanwhile my ChatGPT dot is doing all kinds of crazy stuff with Delta on my behalf. Really convenient tbh. My chat bot talking to a Delta chat bot.
dealing with bullshit is like 95% of the pitch of agents. Few things are more bullshit than dealing with airlines.
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Awww I totally feel bad for an airline that intentionally tries to scam people by tricking them into paying for more expensive tickets when a less expensive option is available. And makes booking intentionally confusing to the point that having an agent just book a flight for you is easier than just booking it yourself. Yeah. I totally feel bad for them. /s
We should ban hacking while we're at it. /s
Ah, a point of competition!