AI companies want agents to handle your everyday errands—but Uber, DoorDash, and Airbnb say barely anyone is using them for that

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Uber reported just four rides booked by outside agents in one week, while DoorDash and Airbnb also saw negligible activity.

From Meta’s fluffy Muse to OpenAI’s onigiri-shaped Dots, AI companies have rolled out agents they promise will help people cross things off their to-do lists, whether that’s booking a trip, ordering food, or shopping online. But the companies that provide those services are reporting consumers haven’t yet flocked to use those agents to buy on their behalf.

Executives from Uber, Doordash, and Airbnb said AI agents make up a negligible amount of their businesses so far even as all three develop their own AI tools to make their services easier to use.

Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy told analysts on the rideshare app’s Nov. 4 Q3 earnings call that AI agents only booked four Uber rides and 500 Uber Eats deliveries out of 320 million combined rides and food deliveries during the week of Halloween. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu similarly told analysts on the company’s Oct. 29 Q3 earnings call AI agents are generating “maybe several hundred orders in total across the time that they have been up and running.” Muse and Dots both launched in September.

One explanation for the low engagement is that agents are promising to automate tasks that are already easy. Matt Maher, founder and CEO of tech research and development firm M7 Innovations, told Fortune tech giants’ AI agents are often overcomplicating simple things like booking a restaurant reservation that weren’t problems “that needed a lot of innovation” to begin with.

“Big Tech companies] bludgeon us with solutions that are desperately looking for problems,” Maher said. “If you really want to nab something immediately, it’s going to be easier if you do it yourself as a human.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi echoed that sentiment in the earnings call, saying it takes a median of 50 seconds for a customer to order an Uber and 90 seconds to order Uber Eats, so they’re unlikely to turn to an agent to do that.

Airbnb is in a similar position with low traction from AI agents, but its situation differs in that users enjoy spending more time…

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