Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says AI has ruined internet: Search engine days are long gone

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) is ruining the internet. During a recent interview, he said that the days of search engines being “the dominant interface of the web” are “long gone.” Speaking on the WIRED Big Interview Podcast, Prince expressed his concerns about a near-term dystopian AI scenario. He said: “Now, if you run a search, it gives you back an answer at the top of the page. It doesn’t give you a treasure map. Instead, it provides you with what they call an AI Overview, which has taken a whole bunch of content, smashed it together, summarised it in various ways, and synthesised it.” Prince also noted AI is not a search engine but an “answer engine,” and it does not generate traffic, which is essential for funding the work of internet content creators such as researchers, writers, and journalists.