Instead of 'renting' influence from human creators, companies should build proprietary AI-generated virtual influencers. This AI persona becomes an ownable asset and a competitive moat, providing consistent and controllable brand representation without the high costs and risks of human influencers.

The current ecosystem of insecure, community-submitted AI agent skills is unsustainable. The likely monetization path is a trusted, centralized "app store" that vets skills for security, offers them via subscription, and takes a revenue share from developers.

The rise of AI browser agents acting on a user's behalf creates a conflict with platform terms of service that require a "human" to perform actions. Platforms like LinkedIn will lose this battle and be forced to treat a user's agent as an extension of the user, shifting from outright bans to reasonable usage limits.

OpenAI's path to profitability isn't just selling subscriptions. The strategy is to create a "team of helpers" within ChatGPT to replace expensive human services. The bet is that users will pay significantly for an AI that can act as their personal shopper, travel agent, and financial advisor, unlocking massive new markets.

Unlike competitors who would struggle to introduce ads into AI chat, Meta's user base is already accustomed to ads in their feeds. This gives Meta a unique advantage to monetize a proactive consumer AI agent that can surface sponsored suggestions for shopping or travel without creating user friction.

The nascent AI agent ecosystem lacks effective discovery mechanisms for third-party tools ('skills'). This creates an opportunity for curated marketplaces that help users find, vet, and even pay for high-quality, trustworthy agent capabilities, solving a key bottleneck to adoption.

The key to defending platforms from Sybil attacks isn't to police AI-generated content, which will become ubiquitous. Instead, the focus should be on ensuring "uniqueness"—the principle that one individual can only have a limited number of accounts. This prevents a single actor from creating thousands of bots and overwhelming the system.

Platforms with real human-generated content have a dual revenue opportunity in the AI era. They can serve ads to their human user base while also selling high-value data licenses to companies like Google that need authentic, up-to-date information to train their large language models.

According to WorldCoin's Alex Blania, the fundamental business model of social media relies on facilitating human-to-human interaction. The ultimate threat from AI agents isn't merely spam or slop, but the point at which users become so annoyed with inauthentic interactions that the core value proposition of the platform collapses entirely.