In an effort to turn chatbots into sophisticated AI agents, many startups in Silicon Valley are building near-perfect copies of popular websites such as Amazon, Gmail and United Airlines.
These copies fully simulate menus, buttons, and interfaces, allowing AI to learn how to complete online tasks, from booking flights, renting cars, to shopping on Amazon.
A typical example is United.com, recreated by div Garg's AGI company. Initially using United's brand name and logo, the website was later renamed "Fly Unified" to avoid copyright infringement.
Garg said the goal is to create a training environment for AI through enhanced learning, where AI agents experiment with multiple approaches to complete tasks.
We want to build an environment that fully emulates human-made operations, from booking flights to entering data into office software, said Robert Farlow, CEO of Plato.
This trend, driven by venture capital, shows that the technology industry is searching for the huge amount of digital data needed to develop AI. When many websites actually block the bot, creating digital copies becomes an effective solution.
In recent months, Garg and AGI have recreated websites such as Amazon, Airbnb and Gmail, with new names such as Omnizon, Staynb and Go Mail.
These copies help AI learn skills through trial and error, instead of learning directly from user behavior on real websites.
AI systems, now powered by neural networks, analyze patterns from self-generated data to improve the ability to automate work.
However, legal issues are still unclear. Robin Feldman, Professor of UC San Francisco Law University, said that copying websites for AI training could violate copyright, but the court could rule that this was legal.
However, companies continue to develop digital copies, aiming to shorten the gap between the current capabilities of AI and the goal of automating most office work in the future.
