How do you introduce AI into a product without making it feel like a gimmick?
Most AI features feel like gimmicks because they're a button looking for a reason to exist. Someone in a meeting said "we need AI" and three weeks later (or maybe hours now with Claude Code) there's a sparkle icon in the corner that summarizes things nobody asked to have summarized.
The test I use: if you stripped the word "AI" off it entirely, would people still want it? If the answer is no, it's a gimmick.
At Basedash the thing that stuck wasn't AI chat to ask data questions. It was the AI doing the actual job a data analyst would do: connecting to your data, finding a correlation you wouldn't have thought to look for, and messaging you at 7am with something you can act on. Nobody cares that it's AI. They care that the work got done while they were asleep.
So I think the trick is to stop shipping AI as a feature and start shipping the outcome it produces. The model is an implementation detail. The value is whatever the user no longer has to do themselves.
How have you been designing AI features that don't feel bolted on?
Replies
PopShort.Al -Stream Short Drama
I completely agree with the idea that users don't actually want AI. They want outcomes. We've seen the same thing in AI storytelling— most creators weren't trying to generate scripts or scenes. They were trying to create something people would actually watch.
As a one-click AI short drama platform, the moment we started thinking less about content generation and more about helping creators get to a finished story, the conversations changed. Nobody wakes up wanting more prompts. Nobody wakes up wanting more AI. They want fewer steps between an idea and a result.
Receiptor AI
The products that got it right led with the outcome. The "strip AI off it" test is the best filter I've heard. If the answer to "would people still want this?" is no, you're shipping a press release, not a product. That said, for AI agents, since AI is not a simple feature but is at the core of the product, this test might be less relevant.
the sparkle icon test is real. if the feature needs a ✨ emoji to justify its existence it's probably a gimmick. the best AI features I've seen are the ones where I didn't even realize AI was involved until someone told me. it just felt like the product was weirdly good at knowing what I needed. the moment you have to label it "AI-powered" to make people care, you've already lost
Basedash: AI data analyst
@tina_chhabra agreed, I love AI features that just run in the background to improve your experience. Unironically I think Apple is actually decent at this.
I think the best AI features are the ones users don’t have to “try.” They just show up at the right moment and remove work. The moment you need to explain why the AI button is useful, it probably wasn’t needed there in the first place.