United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelers

Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by cakeface on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @08:13PM (#50461658)

I have found these agentic blocks sort of inspiring and in the spirit of a free market. Amazon blocked my Muse, so I told Muse to find other vendors and prefer the shopify store for the brand. That was a pain for me to search through but AI has no problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by BeetleB on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:02PM (#50462523)

It's funny. For a few days I had my own personal bot. It didn't browse many pages, but was enough to have me blacklisted from so many sites.

A lot of online retailers refuse to load for me as a human. But Amazon does. I used to avoid them in the past but guess who's getting my money now.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on be... by Buttons840 on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:34PM (#50462740)

I'm not sure if this was your point, but AI will eventually just flow to the competitor that wants business and has the best price.

Want to block bots? Okay, watch your customers just seamlessly move to a competitor without requiring even the slightest thought or action from the customer.

Of course, if--somehow--customers moving to a competitor doesn't actually hurt the company they're moving away from... I might have to start questioning exactly how this whole "free market capitalism" experiment is working out. I think losing customers is still a bad thing, but I'm not 100% sure anymore.

[ Parent | on HN ]