W3C and the State of the Web in the AI Era

W3C's VP Technical Strategy, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote "W3C and the State of the Web in the AI Era", a document putting together the observations and findings of the W3C Strategy Team about how the W3C technical agenda for the web needs to evolve based on the rise of AI agents. It is part of building a consistent, coherent shared vision for evolving the web, starting with AI. 

W3C needs to position itself as the venue where AI and web stakeholders discuss the risks and opportunities of this evolution of web user agents to develop responsible technology standards that align with W3C’s vision for the web. W3C’s core vision is to develop the web for all humanity: we have to keep humanity at the center of the web while allowing AI agents to act on their behalf.

This paper is intended to foster discussion in the technical community at TPAC — the most important W3C community event of the year. 

In addition to outlining our understanding of how current and emerging AI technologies intersect with the W3C's roadmap this document can help TPAC 2026 participants prepare for the many discussions on the agentic web that will take place in group meetings, a mini-Workshop, and breakouts. This paper does include some early recommendations that we expect to socialize during TPAC and we seek community feedback.

This report will be presented during the Web and AI Interest Group session on 29 October and feedback is also welcome to public-webai@w3.org and the w3c/webai-roadmap repository.