We often "add AI" to old flows:
- AI in CRM that still looks like Excel
- Interfaces that require prompt engineering for a simple action
- "Assistants" that can't act without exact instructions
This is not the future. It's the convenient past with new stickers.
AI is not just a tool. As Pete Koomen writes: AI is an opportunity to rethink the very logic of the product. An AI-first product is not:
when-you-click → it-responds
It is:
when-you-think → it-does
What true AI products must be
- Not an old process with a voice assistant glued on top
- Removing complexity, not just wrapping it up
- Working at the level of intent, not buttons
A simple example
A normal navigation app asks: Where do you want to go? → and builds a route.
A smart AI product already knows you have a meeting, checks traffic and weather, remembers you dislike minibuses, and suggests the best departure option.
AI is not press → get.
AI is I thought → it's ready.