Last week, Copilot made an unsolicited appearance in Microsoft 365. This week, Apple turned on Apple Intelligence by default in its upcoming operating system releases. And it isn’t easy to get through any of Google’s services without stumbling over Gemini.
Regulators worldwide are keen to ensure that marketing and similar services are opt-in. When dark patterns are used to steer users in one direction or another, lawmakers pay close attention.
But, for some reason, forcing AI on customers is acceptable. Rather than asking “we’re going to shovel a load of AI services into your apps that you never asked for, but our investors really need you to use, is this OK?” the assumption instead is that users will be delighted to see their formerly pristine applications cluttered with AI features.
Customers have not asked for any of this. There has been no clamoring for search summaries, no pent-up demand for the revival of a jumped-up Clippy. There is no desire to wreak further havoc on the environment to get an almost-correct recipe for tomato soup. And yet here we are, ready or not.
Without a choice to opt in, the beatings will continue until AI adoption improves or users find that pesky opt-out option.
No, that just plays into their hands. If you complain that it sucks, you’re just “using it wrong”.
Its better to not use it at all so they end up with dogshit engagement metrics and the exec who approved the spend has to explain to the board why they wasted so much money on something their employees clearly don’t want or need to use.
Remember, they won’t show the complaints, just the numbers, so those numbers have to suck if you really want the message to get through.
This! ☝️