The problem is that AI agents play all sorts of games to get better prices, and this guzzles resources that are supposed to be for dealing with legitimate problems. e.g. If an airline is dealing with an AI caller that's rescheduling a flight it intentionally booked at the wrong time to shave a few bucks off an airfare, somebody who needs to cancel a flight to attend a funeral will wait longer in line. If a human does this to save a few bucks, you let them. It's not a big problem because most people place more value on their own time. If everybody uses AI agents to do this for them, then you have to do something.

Airlines and other companies are faced with a choice: Let everything go to shit for people who don't use AI agents, or start discouraging the use of AI agents. It will be interesting to see whether companies embrace anti-AI AI agents or try to weight the penalties such that deterrence is achieved without them. e.g. Would you continue using an AI agent to book flights if you faced a potential lifetime ban from that airline?

I personally like the idea of AI surcharges. The airline could put it in their ToS that any use of AI booking agents will result in a surcharge. If your account gets flagged for AI agent games, you get an AI surcharge slapped on your flight. In the case of a false positive, if a human calls up and demands the surcharge be dropped, you do it. If an AI agent calls to complain, you double it. Most users of AI agents don't want to deal with customer service to get surcharges dropped every time they book a flight. This would make it cheaper and/or easier to just book a flight yourself... or use a very well behaved AI agent.