When “AI Mode” Becomes a UX Trap
Tech companies are rushing to add AI features — but when “AI mode” slows down core experiences, it’s time to reevaluate who it’s really helping.
In the rush to sprinkle artificial intelligence into every product, tech companies are forgetting the most basic principle of product design: the user experience must come first.
Over the past year, countless apps, browsers, note-taking tools, and even calendars have added an “AI mode.” Sometimes it summarizes your work; sometimes it suggests what you might want to do next. Too often, it mostly makes you wait. The irony is painful — tools once celebrated for their speed and simplicity are now bogged down by loading spinners and server calls to third-party AI models.
The performance paradox
AI integration is meant to augment human efficiency. But when a core feature that used to respond instantly now takes 50 seconds to appear because an “assistant” is analyzing context, users don’t feel assisted — they feel interrupted.
For lightweight products like to-do lists, email clients, or creative apps, responsiveness is the product. A small delay breaks the mental flow. A 2025 browser that takes longer to open a tab because it’s “thinking about how you might want to use it” has lost the plot.
Innovation ≠ obligation
Companies often frame AI adoption as inevitable. But inevitability is not strategy. Adding “AI mode” to tick an investor checkbox or chase a press cycle is not the same as building intelligence that truly enhances usability.
If your product’s defining advantage was speed or clarity, don’t smother it with features that make the experience feel bloated or unstable.
In fact, restraint can be the new innovation. The most forward-thinking design decision in 2025 might be to not add AI — or to hide it elegantly behind the scenes, where it never slows the user down.
Trust comes from consistency, not novelty
Users will forgive lack of AI far more easily than they’ll forgive crashes, lag, or lost data. Every second of delay chips away at trust — and trust, once gone, doesn’t regenerate as quickly as a ChatGPT response.
Building for long-term loyalty means remembering why users came to your product in the first place. A note-taking tool should let people write, smoothly. A browser should browse, and not wait. A media editing app should feel fast and reliable. Intelligence should amplify that experience, not overwrite it.
The SVT view
AI should serve the user, not the marketing department. A product that performs worse after “getting smarter” isn’t intelligent — it’s confused about its own purpose.
The companies that will win the next decade won’t be those who added AI everywhere. They’ll be the ones who knew where not to.