Actually we have leads / customers asking us in Request for Proposals, what AI we have in our products [Because competition has it]. We know the competition doesn't have that, they call their smart alerting features when a certain threshold is met "AI-powered".
AI became a marketing tool, and customers grade you on it.
Internet during the dotcom. Everything was built on the internet. Think pets.com. Blockchain has gone through this a number of times. Kodak renaming to include blockchain in its name. Now its AIs turn.
Two of the founders of my company are old school AIers (80s MIT and CMU/Stanford; PARC etc). When an investor asks us if we use “AI” we now say, “oh not at all, just some machine learning”. And it’s not core to the product, just some safety systems.
Topmost applications where the badge would actually get my attention:
- anything biological
- music
- packet crafting
- risk management
- anything regulated
- robot behavior
Curious if a badge for “def not AI powered” would be a plus for some domains.
I love to hear pitches on a company product and just blurt out "Where is the AI?" or "What's your AI strategy?" just so they can take it back to their teams and spend loads of $$$ developing some useless AI feature no one really wants.
I call this technique Roadmap derailing.
There's some things I'd love an AI powered service for - for example no one has really gotten AI powered email right yet. But I use and love a few "AI" services too. Kagi's on a good path with summarization of results and quick answers - I use that AI service everyday. Claude is pretty darn good at inventing recipes from a list of ingredients and appliances that I have available. But to be fair to the blogger, I don't care that it uses LLMs - I just like that it solves a problem for me.
The same hype cycle as with anything else, as noted in the article. I too am wary of the badge - what's your actual product doing man?
Remember when everything was on the blockchain?
I saw a Google ad for "AI-based" reverse recipe search (list what food items you have, find makeable recipes.) That was a thing 15 years ago.
I figured there'd be a healthy "AI client" market with basic controls, ability to get advanced and use eg JSON templates/tools, and no code multi-step workflows
Instead seems people went with thin layers on incumbent or thin wrapper on ChatGPT.
May the next year be more interesting
People who are tooling up definitely want a 1/4" drill bit.
Their client wants the shelf.
The shelf wants the 1/4" hole.
The installer wants the hole to be precise and clean and the only way they know of obtaining that is a 1/4" drill bit. Their last one broke and so they want one.
"the visuals are also so overdone — if I see one more gradient-colored button with or emojis for the "AI-enhancement" or whatever, I'll just make a plugin to block that CSS altogether"
Gradients... so hot right now.
Yeah, it's now in EVERY producthunt title. So fatiguing. I wonder when saying "AI-powered" will = saying "computer-powered" and we can just drop it.
- Your in-house AI video marketing agency
- AI powered zero-waste meal planner
- Turn your document databases into AI powered libraries
- LLM powered intelligent knowledge interface
- Build AI powered SaaS apps and internal tools with no code
- AI tool for stunning product photosJust wait what Apple will showcase that intelligence
With AI models getting better every year, this article will age quite badly.
Yes, there are inaccuracies and hallucinations, but it can still be made to benefit many applications.
> that's what your "AI-powered" marketing signals to me now: "We added AI to cash-in on the wave and stopped giving a shit to what users actually wanted".
Hit the nail on the head here. That's the message I get from such marketing as well.