AI's killer app is hiding in plain sight

Coin Geek

8 hours ago

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Since November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT, the world has been talking about artificial intelligence (AI) nonstop. Primarily, the narrative has been that AI is a sort of superintelligence that can do anything and everything, regardless of whether it's advantageous or disadvantageous to society.
However, AI as superintelligence that manifests itself in several different forms ranging from 'agents' to 'your personal secretary' never really seemed to materialize, and even when they have been brought to life, they've been lackluster or flown under the radar.
Which makes you wonder: How are people actually using AI? And more importantly, what's AI's killer app, what is the one use case that's really sticking?
What is the top use case for AI?
Similar to the AI superintelligence we've been promised, the consensus around what AI's killer app is has generally been elusive.
Because AI can be and do so many different things for so many different people, there was never really a consensus on what the top use case of AI was or is. However, that is beginning to change.
Data is beginning to emerge that suggests AI's killer app is 'search' and that the app AI has killed is the search engine.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explored the effect that AI, specifically Google's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) AI Overview tool, has on search results, and the results were significant. Many of the world's most well-known digital publishers ( HuffPost, Business Insider, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal ) reported that traffic they received to their desktop and mobile sites via organic search is down and that it's having a significant impact on their businesses, because of AI.
Why organic search traffic is declining
Organic search is unpaid search traffic. It's when a user types a question into a search engine, gets returned a sea of blue links related to their search topic across multiple pages, and subsequently clicks on one of these links to locate the information or answer to the question they had. In many instances, depending on the topic searched, the link points to an article on a publisher's website.
Organic search has grown to be a critical component for many of these publishers and is often the largest driver of traffic to their websites, accounting for 40% to 60% of all traffic in some instances. This traffic translates directly into revenue for the publisher because more visits equals more ad impressions, which equals more ad revenue.
That being said, publishers sometimes go to great lengths to get their articles to appear higher in search results through various SEO practices. However, this is all changing to the detriment of publishers, thanks to AI.
How AI-powered search is changing user behavior
Because of AI, organic search traffic has drastically declined. According to The WSJ report, organic search traffic to websites owned by Business Insider declined by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025; traffic was down 7.5% for The New York Times and 5% for The WSJ in that same period.
Why is this happening? Because of AI-infused search enginges and platforms, a significant portion of users aren't actually clicking through to the linked articles that appear in search engines anymore.
Many search platforms, most importantly Google, which handles the majority of the world's search volume, have implemented AI into their search engines. Whether it's AI-generated summaries (as in Google's AI Overviews) or directly answering user queries (as ChatGPT does), AI is fundamentally changing the way people interact with search.
Traditionally, a user would type a question into Google, get a list of links, and click through to a publisher's website to read the full article. But with AI-powered search, that final step of clicking the link and spending time on the publisher's website disappears.
Tools like Google's AI Overviews scan the web, pull information from multiple sources (often including articles from major publishers), and display a synthesized answer at the top of the search page. There often isn't a need to click links or read articles. Chatbot-style interfaces like ChatGPT or Google's new AI Mode take this even further by engaging users in a conversational Q&A format, providing answers in real-time with very few links shown. Sometimes, they won't even show links unless the user explicitly prompts the AI to provide sources. In both cases, the AI is replacing the click-through process, which is exactly why publishers see their organic search traffic nosedive.
Why AI search is winning with users
AI searches and summaries are simply more efficient for users.
Instead of sorting through multiple sites in search of the exact information they're looking for, users now get fast, clear, direct answers when they use AI-powered search. This new AI search workflow cuts out the friction of the traditional search engine process, saving users valuable time by providing answers that are easier to digest.
Unfortunately for publishers or any business that relies on web traffic from search engines, AI-powered search is a major thorn in the side of their business models, even though it's an obvious win for users.
More than any 'personal assistant' or futuristic agent, AI's true killer app is shaping up to be search. Although the idea of improved search isn't as flashy as having AI complete tasks for us end-to-end (agents) or achieving 'superintelligence,' AI-powered search is a very large, practical market that was overdue for an upgrade. Beyond that, the search use case is accessible, which I believe has been one of the biggest obstacles to wider AI agent adoption.
AI-powered search doesn't require users to have specialized knowledge beyond knowing which search engine they want to use and what questions they want to ask. More advanced AI concepts like agents aren't second nature to most consumers just yet and will likely require some sort of re-education campaign before the vast majority of people have the skills and understanding to get the most out of those systems.
This makes me think that maybe AI has been overcomplicated and overpromised and that its builders will see more success and the much-needed profit they are seeking by building 'simple' products and optimizing 'simple' processes because it might just be the simplicity of AI-driven search that makes it so dominant. Without the need to reimagine how a process works or the need to learn an entirely new system or workflow before jumping in, users are naturally gravitating toward AI search. This is why search, more than anything else, is shaping to be AI's killer app.
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