I think this is where a lot of people get AI wrong.
Most users do not care about the model.
They do not care about the buzzwords.
They do not care about how advanced the backend sounds.
They care about one thing:
Does the app make life easier?
Does it save time?
Does it reduce effort?
Does it feel helpful?
Does it understand what they need faster than before?
That’s why I think the best AI apps won’t win because they look futuristic.
They’ll win because they feel useful.
And honestly, that’s a much harder problem than just adding AI to a product.
Because building a real AI app is not just plugging in a model.
It’s product thinking, workflow design, trust, usability, and making the experience work in the real world.
That gap between AI hype and AI people actually use is where things get interesting.
I’ve been exploring that space more lately here ai
What makes an AI app feel genuinely useful to you — and what makes it feel like a gimmick?
The AI features that stick around are always the boring ones. Autocomplete that learned your codebase. Error messages with a fix attached. Search that gets what you meant. Nobody talks about those in demos, but nobody removes them either.
The flashy stuff gets quietly deleted. Usually because someone pushed to ship it before anyone could explain what problem it was solving. I've seen this a few times — the feature works technically, users just never touch it.
Honestly the question is the same as it's always been in product: what's the one thing people wish they didn't have to do?
Feeling smarter isn't enough, the app has to actually be smart.
For me, an AI app feels genuinely useful when it saves time and simplifies tasks without making me think about how it works. Anything that feels like a gimmick usually overpromises or interrupts my workflow rather than helping.
Alexey Kalachnikov
One app or AI alone is not enough - at minimum, a sensor is required. For example, my AI measures 300+ physical and mental health parameters, and it definitely includes a sensor that reads the pulse wave from the user’s wrist.