You’ve probably noticed it too. You open your favorite app—the one that used to just work—and suddenly there’s a new AI button. You try to search for a simple thing, and a chatbot pops up asking if you need help. You didn’t ask for this. Nobody did. And yet here we are, drowning in features that feel like they were designed by a committee that never met a real user.
Let’s call it what it is: every AI feature you didn’t ask for is a CEO trying to justify a $10 billion data center. The trillions of dollars spent on GPUs, the thousands of layoffs to ‘restructure for AI’—it all has to be justified somehow. And the only way to justify it is to shove AI into every product, whether it makes sense or not.
I spoke to a product manager at a major tech company. She told me off the record: ‘We’re told to put AI everywhere because the board needs to see we’re doing something with those GPUs. User feedback is secondary. The real metric is showing investors we’re spending the capex.’ That’s not innovation. That’s a hedge fund with a chatbot.
The irony is breathtaking. Companies are forcing you to beta-test their expensive infrastructure so they can avoid admitting the ROI isn’t there yet. You’re not using a magical genie—you’re a captive audience for a cost-recovery exercise. The ‘AI revolution’ isn’t about making your life better; it’s about making quarterly reports look less embarrassing.
Look at the pattern. Every week, another company announces ‘AI-powered’ features that are clunky, irrelevant, or actively worse than what they replaced. There’s the video editor that now auto-generates captions in a language you didn’t choose. There’s the email client that summarizes your messages with hallucinations. There’s the note-taking app that insists on rewriting your thoughts. None of these solve a real problem. They solve a boardroom problem: ‘We need to show we’re AI-first.’
You might think this is a technological leap. It’s not. It’s an economic arms race. Companies are spending billions on AI infrastructure not because users demand it, but because their competitors are doing the same. It’s a defensive strategy masquerading as a product feature. Neutrality is death in the AI bubble, so everyone is forced to play the game—even if the game is rigged against actual user experience.
What happens next? The bubble will correct. The companies that slapped AI on everything without a real use case will either pivot or die. The ones that survive will be those that actually solved a user problem, not a shareholder problem. But until then, you’re the free labor in a grand experiment. Every time you dismiss a chatbot, every time you ignore a ‘smart’ suggestion, you’re voting with your frustration. The question is whether anyone is listening.
So the next time you see a ‘smart’ feature that feels dumb, remember: you’re not the customer. You’re the justification. And the only thing you should be doing is asking one question: ‘Did anyone actually ask for this?’
FAQ
Q: But isn't AI actually improving products? Some features are genuinely useful.
A: Sure, some are. But the problem is the indiscriminate shoving of AI into everything. The useful features are drowning in a sea of useless ones driven by corporate desperation. The signal is there, but the noise is deafening.
Q: What should I do as a user? Just ignore the AI features?
A: Yes, and more importantly, give feedback. Tell companies exactly what you think of the pointless AI. If enough users revolt, the pressure to justify capex with bad features might actually force a rethink. Your frustration is a market signal.
Q: Isn't this just a normal tech bubble? Won't it sort itself out?
A: It will, but the damage is real. Wasted billions, ruined user experiences, and a lot of hype that sets back real AI progress. The bubble correction will be painful for companies that drank the Kool-Aid, but the survivors will be the ones that actually listened to users.