I currently use AI to supplement my daily domain name research. I do all of the work on my own, and I follow that with some manual prompting to help me uncover domain names that are pending delete or coming up for expiry auction that I may have overlooked.
At some point, I suspect I will use tools that are automated. Instead of plugging in the data and adding prompts to find domain names, this will be done by AI and the domain names will be shown to me without any of my own involvement.
Down the road, I may even trust AI to backorder domain names on my behalf or bid in auctions on my behalf. I imagine this is done by some people to some degree already. In addition, automated bidding by domain investor-controlled bots via auction provider APIs has been used by colleagues for a while. Some of the largest portfolios were built with the help of AI-free auction bots. I don’t think AI has been much of a factor in those bidding tools though.
At this point, I would not trust AI tools to bid on my behalf without serious guardrails in place. I would be concerned about glitches that cause the AI tools to bid much higher than they should or to bid on more domain names than I would want. I believe there will be a time when this capability is commonplace and domain investor bots are bidding against each other on behalf of investors.
Knowing what you know now, would you trust AI tools to backorder domain names and/or bid on domain name auctions on your behalf?
Would you trust AI tools to backorder and/or bid on domain names on your behalf?
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) January 26, 2026
Absolutely not, Elliot.
Some of them, but not all of them.
First, because I don’t trust them.
And second, because I thoroughly enjoy doing it myself.
Finally, my brain benefits from it and stays sharp.
Anyhow, different strokes for different folks.