We most certainly have the computer vision tech to detect URLs from images of the camera stream. That could be an extra feature of QR code readers app if it's not already.

If you have a Pixel phone, open the camera, scroll right to More, open Lens and point your phone at a (human readable) URL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lens

Then we have very different ideas of why QR codes are bad. I think they’re bad because they waste space with something that is completely useless to human senses. They should be replaced with good OCR, not with manual typing.

Teach machines to make use of human language instead of teaching humans to make use of machine language.

99.9% of the information in your computing life is not human readable; it's encoded in radio waves and electrical pulses that your senses can't interpret.

You can’t experience them with your senses at all, which is completely different. You can see a QR code, and in fact you have to see it to be able to use it, so it takes up space on signs, in magazines, billboards, etc.

but they'd enter bit.ly URL with no problem, and it can redirect to such URL