🧭  Home / AI Magic / Is It Magical?

Introduction

It is 2024, every consumer organization is now a tech company, and every tech company is now AI first. Apologies to crypto and metaverse — your moment seems to have passed. AI is now a mandatory feature or upsell in the most banal of products. However, the true value of AI features lies not just in the efficiency of everyday operations, but in their potential to craft magical experiences*.*

The questions

As we reach a tipping point where the innocuous sparkles emoji ✨ (now synonymous with AI) is permanently present in digital user interfaces, it is essential for us to pause and evaluate. Especially when every product has a paid subscription, and there is a constant barrage of shiny marketing focused on AI upgrades.

To cut through this hype, I continue to ask myself a few questions that serve as a reminder for assessing the real value of AI features in my daily tools and workflows.

The classical approach for evaluating new innovations focused on time, quality of output, and cost. Where X represents any task that one might already be performing using an existing product.

  1. Does it help me to do X faster?
  2. Does it allow me to do X with better quality?
  3. Does it do X for lesser cost?

But is it magical?

While these classical questions are crucial, there's another dimension that will continue to become increasingly significant in the age of AI product adoption:

  1. Does it feel magical to perform X?

    There is a vivid memory I have of using ChatGPT (txt2txt), Midjourney (txt2img), and Runway (txt2video) for the first time. The surrealness that something was being created from ether, exactly as I had imagined. Knowing pretty well in that moment that the future of work had changed forever.

    <aside> 👉🏾 Magical can mean different things to different people in the context of digital user experiences. For me, it is an emotional state, where I’ve tried out a new product which makes doing task X feel so effortless and intuitive that going back to status quo is near impossible.

    </aside>

    It is imperative to mention that with the accelerating pace of technological changes, what might have seemed magical a few months ago soon starts to feel ordinary. This continues until the moment when a new magical product experience comes out, and the cycle goes on.

Personal use & preference

While evaluating my core digital products, including AI first tools and paid product subscriptions I use daily, realized that I don't currently pay for any premium$^{(i)}$ AI products. My personal use is primarily through Free offerings.

For products with a Freemium$^{(ii)}$model, I've found that either the base tier suffices for my usage requirements$^{(iii)}$, or the AI add on doesn't seem compelling enough to justify the additional cost.