AI Is Killing the Web — Can Anything Save It?

The Founders
Aug 19
3 min read

Updated: Aug 20

For decades, the internet’s economic engine ran on a simple bargain: creators publish content, search engines send traffic, and that traffic is monetized through ads, subscriptions, or donations. But the rise of ChatGPT and its AI rivals is tearing up that contract.

Now, instead of clicking through to websites, users ask questions directly to AI — and get neatly packaged answers. The result? Content creators are losing traffic, revenue, and relevance at a pace we’ve never seen before.

The AI Shift: From Search to Instant Answers

Since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, over 800 million people have used it, making it the most downloaded iPhone app. Apple reported a decline in Safari searches, and Google — still holding about 90% of the U.S. search market — has scrambled to keep up with its own AI Overviews and “AI Mode.”

But this shift is devastating for publishers:

Worldwide human search traffic fell 15% in a single year.
Science and education sites lost 10% of visitors.
Reference sites dropped 15%.
Health sites were hit hardest, down 31%.

When AI answers the question directly, the user rarely clicks through. Similarweb estimates that the share of news-related searches with no onward clicks jumped from 56% to 69% after Google’s AI rollout.

The Economic Breakdown

The fallout is brutal for businesses built on traffic:

Dotdash Meredith saw Google-driven traffic drop from 60% to the mid-30s.
Stack Overflow reports fewer posted questions as AI-summarized answers replace forum interaction.
Wikipedia warns that unattributed AI summaries block the pathways that bring in contributors.

While some publishers are striking licensing deals with AI firms (News Corp with OpenAI, Reddit with Google), the payouts are often small relative to the losses. Many sites are too small to sue or negotiate — and blocking AI crawlers means losing visibility altogether.

Emerging Survival Strategies

Several new models are being tested:

Cloudflare is piloting a pay-as-you-crawl system where AI bots pay per visit.
Tollbit acts like a paywall for bots, letting sites charge different rates for fresh versus older content.
ProRata wants to redistribute ad revenue from AI answers to the sites whose content was used.

Publishers are also diversifying away from search:

Building newsletters, apps, and subscription services.
Hosting live events.
Moving into audio and video, which AI finds harder to summarize.

Still, the power imbalance remains huge — and without new rules, most independent sites won’t survive the AI disruption.

Where GRACE Fits In: An AI That Gives Back

The problem with most AI tools is that they extract value without returning it — a one-way street. This is where GRACE – your wellness confidant takes a different path.

GRACE isn’t a web scraper or a content thief. She doesn’t strip the internet for quick answers and starve creators of clicks. Instead, she’s designed for human connection and growth, not just information retrieval.

As a mental health partner, GRACE engages in reflective AI chat that helps you process your own thoughts, not replace them.
She acts as an AI therapy alternative, focusing on affordable mental health support without eroding the ecosystems of writers, educators, and creators.
GRACE’s daily emotional check-ins don’t come at the cost of someone else’s livelihood — her role is to empower the individual, not exploit the collective.

Where generative AI can hollow out human creativity and the web’s economic model, GRACE reinforces both by fostering self-expression, active thinking, and meaningful dialogue. She’s proof that AI can serve without consuming.

The Stakes: Not Just the Web, but Democracy

As Bill Gross of ProRata put it, “To make the internet survive, to make democracy survive, to make content creators survive, AI search has to share revenue with creators.”

If we allow the web to collapse into AI monopolies that consume but never contribute, we risk losing the diversity of voices and independent thought that the internet was built on.

AI doesn’t have to kill the web. It can evolve with it — but only if we build tools, policies, and business models that protect creators. GRACE shows that an AI can respect boundaries, sustain human creativity, and still deliver profound value to its users.

GRACE is built on a unique database that is not to be found online. Download the app and start conversing. 15 free messages and 5 mins of audio and video calls each month.