Microsoft sees artificial intelligence transforming the internet as fundamentally as mobile phones have over the past two decades. But the technology’s limitations could curb its grand vision.

Generative AI – which creates content based on a user’s request – burst into the zeitgeist in late 2022 when Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a conversational chatbot that could take a simple request and generate anything from a limerick to a college essay.

Less than three years later, Microsoft has a plan to move beyond ChatGPT and its copycats by creating the foundation for a new version of the internet.

Microsoft calls it the “open agentic web”, with users sending AI-powered “agents” out into the void to do their bidding. Casual consumers primarily interact with AI now through a Google search – one that repeatedly drums up false answers – or a ChatGPT-style chatbot that generates a conversation.

In Microsoft’s eyes, chatbots are old news.