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.