REAL AI: Why Agentic AI is failing – for now, AI facts, headlines, and quote of the week
By Kevin Hawkins with Korey Hawkins | Vol. 3 Issue 31
REAL AI is a human-created weekly roundup of all things related to artificial intelligence in real estate and emerging AI innovations in other sectors likely to impact our industry. Pass this link to a friend – realai.blog – they will thank you!
Why agentic AI is failing (for now)
You’ve seen the hype: big announcements about “AI agents” or “agentic AI” solutions promising to do it all for you: book travel, and manage your email and your calendar. It’s like having a super‑smart intern who never sleeps. Sounds amazing… until you actually try one.
ChatGPT’s big disappointment
Recently, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and team rolled out the new ChatGPT agent in a polished livestream. They demoed their new AI assistant. It flawlessly completes tasks like shopping, booking travel, and coordinating schedules, all by creating its own virtual computer.
“You can feel the AGI,” Altman declared, referring to artificial general intelligence, a type of AI that can understand, learn, and perform any intellectual task that a human can, setting sky-high expectations.
It turns out that once again, the AI buzz is overpromising and underdelivering.
The anti-bot web we built
Here’s the part the marketing leaves out: the internet was designed to stop exactly this kind of automation.
After years of malicious bots hammering sites and stealing data, websites raised walls. One defining moment was the Oct. 21, 2016, attack when a massive botnet took down and disrupted internet access for numerous major online services.
Netflix, Twitter, PayPal, Amazon, Reddit, Spotify, and many others across the United States and parts of Europe experienced massive disruptions for hours. It was a huge catalyst for the web to start treating all automated traffic as a threat.
That’s why today AI agents or assistants are getting stuck behind:
- CAPTCHAs: Asking you to find all the buses in a photo
- Bot detection scripts: That block transactions
- Behavioral fingerprints: That reject nonhuman clicks
It’s not that your agentic AI can’t do the task; it just can’t get in the door.
Why AI agents are failing today
In the real world, these agentic AIs fail at:
- Shopping: Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, all block them
- Travel & reservations: Booking sites return errors or loop CAPTCHA
- Complex websites: JavaScript-heavy or login-walled pages are invisible
Instead of completing tasks, your AI spins, retries, and seconds turn to minutes as you wait, and wait, and wait.
Then it fails.
The real hurdle: Access, not intelligence
Agentic AI doesn’t just need to “get smarter.” It needs a trusted path to work online. AI agents require AI-friendly APIs that allow for transactions and booking, trusted agent protocols that identify safe automation, and web trust layers that open the door to safe automation.
However, until that infrastructure exists, many AI assistants may do great in a lab, but keep failing in the wild.
Why agents should care
For real estate agents, the takeaway is simple: don’t chase shiny first-to-market features. Video demos look magical because they’re staged in controlled environments where websites don’t fight back. In the real world, the same features can break down, error out, and in the end, turn out to be an incredible waste of your time.
Instead of beta‑testing unfinished tech, wait for the wave behind the hype.
Wait until these new tools and features have cleared the real-world hurdles and prove they work in real life, not just on a livestream.
The REAL AI takeaway
Agentic AI will eventually change the game. We called 2025 “The Year of Agentic AI,” and we are being proven right,
But many AI agents are still not ready for prime time. Don’t buy the bling, buy the bone.
For now, your smartest move isn’t spending hours testing a tool that can’t shop, book, or reserve in the real world. Spend that energy on the AI that saves you time today, not the hype that burns it tomorrow. (-Kevin)
AI Facts and Stats
1. 62% of Millennials surveyed self-reported high levels of AI expertise – McKinsey
2. 42–45% of U.S. households stated they own at least one AI-powered smart home device – Axios
3. 80% of marketers surveyed said they manually review AI content for accuracy – Ahrefs
4. 70% of generative‑AI platforms remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks – Palto Alto Networks
5. A BBC study found that 51% of AI-generated news summaries contained significant issues, including 19% with incorrect information – The Verge
Source: Ahrefs (-Korey)
AI Headlines
Your ChatGPT conversations may be visible in Google Search | 7/31/25 Search Engine Land
Google is indexing ChatGPT shared links, but making your sensitive info public and putting you at risk.
Your ChatGPT History Could Be Used in Court — Here’s What You Need to Know | 7/27/25 Medium
AI chats are not confidentially protected, so use your chatbots wisely.
ChatGPT Is Coming For Excel | 7/30/25 Forbes
ChatGPT is no longer just assisting with Excel formulas, it’s automating them with near-human accuracy.
6 AI scams you’ve probably already seen | 7/29/25 AOL
Learn more about how to spot the red flags of an AI-powered scheme.
Introducing Copilot Mode in Edge: A new way to browse the web | 7/28/25 Windows Blog
Microsoft’s Copilot Vision will be able to scan, analyze, and offer suggestions based on your screen. (-Korey)
AI Quote of the Week
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