Thinking about AI as someone who builds technology products for a living

As a product manager, it's important to recognize the changing landscape of the software industry.

​Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a novelty, but a necessity for companies to stay competitive.

​However, it's not just about using AI for fundraising or press appeal, it's about meeting the changing user expectations.

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We've and will continue to see how AI features like autocomplete and automated customer support wiill become standard across different products.

Users now expect more from software, and it's up to us to deliver. The speed at which users switch between products depends on the category of software and the value of the AI feature.

Everybody building products or with a product in the market needs to consider their AI strategy, which, as I see it, can be one of four plays:

An AI Feature

• Having emails write themselves

An AI Department

• Having AI run your customer support
• Having AI run your marketing and content creation and decisions

An AI Product

• Using unique data sets to build custom LLMs and bring completely new products to market that run solely on AI
• AI personal shopper replacing an ecommerce store

An AI Victim

• Bury your head in the sand and make your organization insanely fragile to fast moving newcomers

Most businesses will adopt the first two, but newer businesses can leverage the third as a competitive advantage. As we reimagine workflows, core software products will need to change.

With the emergence of new user interfaces like text and chat, we can expect even more changes in software.

It's important to understand that an AI strategy is not just a pr tactic but a meaningful shift in meeting user demands.

​Every business needs to keep up with these evolving expectations to survive.

I'll repeat that again - user demands have shifted, you don't have an option but to try and keep up.