Online Reporter
Godfrey Nyoni
FOR decades, the website has been one of the most important building blocks of the internet.
Businesses use websites to reach customers.
Governments publish information online.
News organisations publish stories, entrepreneurs create online stores and schools communicate with students through websites.
But the internet is changing.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly important way for people to access information and services.
Users can increasingly ask AI systems to find information, summarise content, compare options and perform tasks without visiting a website at all.
This creates a fundamental question: if AI becomes the primary interface through which people interact with the internet, will websites still matter?
The answer is yes, but their role could change dramatically.
In the early internet, finding information meant knowing where to go.
Search engines changed this by allowing people to discover websites through search results.
The website remained the destination.
AI introduces another model: instead of a person going through a search engine to reach a website, the future could increasingly involve a person going through AI to reach information or a service directly.
This difference could fundamentally change how websites are designed, discovered and used.
A website can serve many purposes beyond displaying information providing original data, official records, products, services, applications, customer accounts, payment systems and interactive tools.
AI can help users discover or interact with these services, but the underlying digital infrastructure still has to exist.
A bank may use AI to help customers navigate its services, but its systems still need to process transactions.
The interface may change, but the infrastructure does not disappear.
One of the biggest changes may be the relationship between websites and AI systems.
Today, websites are primarily designed for human visitors.
In an AI-first internet, they may increasingly need to be designed for both humans and machines, increasing the importance of structured data, APIs, machine-readable content and accurate documentation.
A website might become less like a digital brochure and more like a trusted information and service platform.
Consider someone asking an AI system about the latest requirements for registering a business in Zimbabwe.
The AI can provide an explanation, but the official government website remains the authoritative source.
AI may become the interface, but websites remain the source.
For governments, banks, universities and companies, maintaining accurate official websites could therefore become even more important in an AI-first world, not less.
When people browse websites directly, they can see the organisation behind the information.
AI can change that relationship if an AI summarises information from multiple websites; users may not know which organisation originally produced it.
Businesses may need to establish strong online identities based on trusted domains, recognisable brands and verified information.
Trust could become one of the most valuable assets on the AI-powered web.
AI can generate enormous amounts of generic content, creating a challenge for websites that mainly publish information AI can easily reproduce.
The value of original information will therefore increase significantly.
Original research, investigative journalism, local expertise, proprietary datasets and expert analysis may become far more valuable than generic content that AI can replicate in seconds.
Traditional websites depend on visitors to generate advertising revenue, subscriptions and product sales.
If AI systems answer questions without sending users to original websites, publishers could receive fewer visitors, disrupting the economic model that supports much of the web.
New ways of compensating information creators will likely need to emerge.
An AI-first internet does not necessarily mean fewer websites; it could mean more intelligent websites.
A website could include AI systems that understand what visitors are trying to accomplish, helping students find programmes, customers identify the right product, or citizens navigate public services.
Instead of simply displaying information, websites could become interactive digital assistants.
The next stage could be even more significant.
AI agents may eventually perform tasks rather than simply answering questions, comparing hosting packages, evaluating requirements and interacting with digital services on a user’s behalf.
Websites would therefore need to support machine-to-machine interactions, increasing the importance of APIs, authentication and secure transactions.
This will also introduce new cybersecurity challenges, as attackers may attempt to manipulate AI-to-website interactions — meaning authentication, API security and data integrity become even more critical.
For Zimbabwe and Africa, an AI-first internet creates both opportunities and important responsibilities.
Businesses could benefit from AI systems helping customers discover local products and services, giving small Zimbabwean companies visibility they could never achieve through traditional search alone.
But organisations will also need to ensure their online information is accurate, structured and trustworthy.
African businesses, researchers, governments and universities have enormous amounts of valuable local knowledge that should be represented online.
Building high-quality websites and digital databases helps preserve this knowledge and expose it to AI systems and the wider world.
A strong African digital presence is critical for tomorrow’s AI ecosystem, not just today’s internet.
AI is changing how people discover and consume information.
Traditional search engines brought people to websites.
AI may increasingly bring information and services directly to people, reducing some forms of website traffic, disrupting online advertising and changing how businesses think about digital presence.
But it does not mean websites are becoming irrelevant.
The website of the future may not always be something a person visits manually.
It could be something an AI system reads, communicates with, retrieves information from or uses to complete a task on behalf of a human being.
The internet may be moving from a web of pages towards a web of intelligent services and in that future, websites will still matter, just in ways we have not yet fully imagined.
Godfrey Nyoni is a technical consultant at Pique Squid. For feedback, contact: www.piquesquid.com/ 00263786526527
