[chasd00]

I think the main driving force is it’s a way to monetize an LLM. If the LLM is doing the buying then a “buyer fee” can be tacked on to the purchase and paid to the LLM provider. That is probably an easier sell than an ongoing monthly subscription.

Also, sellers can offer a payment to the LLM provider to favor their products over competitors.

[rsynnott]

That's kinda backwards, tho. You don't, or at least shouldn't, say "we have this thing, and we need to make people use it, so let's make up use cases even if they make no sense and will fail". (People do this all the time, of course; it's more or less the sunk-cost fallacy.)

[jayd16]

It will certainly happen but it seems like a shady kickback unseen by the the end-user is well beyond relevant ads colocated with search results.

Seems like something that should really be illegal, unless the ads are obvious.

[sebastiennight]

It seems trivial to edit the

    "[Our model] can make mistakes. Double-check the answers"

footer to

    "[Our model] can make mistakes. Double-check the answers. May insert affiliate links which pay us commission."

And I'm speaking as someone building an AI agent. Zero plans of doing this because we have a completely different business model, but still, it wouldn't be the biggest most expensive business decision to make.