The Gifts of GenAI for Consumers

GenAI headlines scream about the  “unprecedented productivity gains” that this transformational technology will deliver to the workforce along with job losses. The stories simultaneously generate excitement and fear. Companies are racing to develop “AI strategies” and capture “the” ROI and competitive advantages of being first. 

These conversations are very supply-side driven (i.e., what can it do) rather than demand driven (i.e., what do consumers want? Or what do companies need?) We haven’t devoted enough energy to  exploring, “what does genAI give humans.” 

Categorically genAI does three things well:

1. Offer a conversational or natural language interface to (mostly) digital services. 

2. Create content such as music, images, code, cartoons, videos, essays, and more. 

3. Analyze vast amounts of language, video, images, numbers, and more to give us answers. Some distill these capabilities as summarizing, synthesizing, categorizing, etc.

Few consumers start their day wanting any of these things.The question is, “what do these capabilities give consumers?”  Consumers start their often chaotic days needing help being organized, learning at school, getting tasks done, relaxing, eating, playing, seeking comfort, achieving goals, and more. 

Late this summer, I studied more than 200 privately funded AI/genAI companies with a consumer focus (e.g., B2C, B2B2C) to understand the applications they were building for consumers. Each was unique and innovative in its own way. 

I created a framework to help companies think about how genAI can impact their consumer experiences and products. These consumer-focused genAI plays primarily fell into one of six categories. GenAI gives consumers:

1. Superpowers. It allows humans to do things they never could have done before whether it is to compose music, code, or illustrate stories with cartoons. I used Dashtoons to illustrate the story of adopting my golden retriever, Diego. This isn’t about productivity - not in a hundred years could I have drawn these cartoon images.

2. Personalization. It creates relevant experiences based on a user’s context. Includes the curation of content. PocketPod curates audio content for me from podcasts. getit.ai’s AI sales agent platform will help consumers make smart product decisions through real-time video conversations with brands online.

3. Comfort. It gives consumers emotional support through the creation of virtual companions such as deceased loved ones, friends, or celebrities. Some companions will be devices such as the pendant called “Friend.” It addresses loneliness by offering a conversational partner. The founder of Replika created a virtual representation of a deceased friend through text messages. The company wants to help consumers improve their emotional well-being.

4. Access. It offers services previously unavailable to humans by changing the economics of services or extending the services (e.g., hours of operation, geography, language, pricing) with virtual representations. Elomia Health offers AI-powered mental health support that is available 24x7. Maia is an assistant to help couples build their relationships. While many of these early plays are focused on mental health, healthcare, or dating, companies are also building products to facilitate access to education, legal services, and financial services.

5. Convenience. It makes it easier or more efficient for humans to do the things they already do (e.g., write, create content, do homework, schedule meetings, etc.). Aurora AI Family Assistant is a digital platform designed to help families manage day-to-day activities and streamline communication. Over time, it learns a family’s preferences or patterns of behavior so that it can make suggestions.

6. Education and Entertainment. It offers interactive, immersive, and individualized experiences that almost anyone can build to help learn and have fun. Consumers can speak with fictional characters with Character.ai. Rebind interviews experts and celebrities to complement the classics with fresh and innovative interactive content. 

This is a snapshot of what genAI is delivering today, and its capabilities are evolving quickly. Key trends include: models rapidly evolving ability to handle more complexity (e.g., hold more context or reason); availability of new data types (e.g., video, languages, training data from the physical world; more agentive applications (i.e., those that can act on our behalf for better or worse); and costs to use the models are dropping. 

AI including genAI tackles relatively narrow use cases today. It will continue to evolve towards artificial general intelligence (AGI) (i.e., be capable of what humans do) and perhaps even super AGI (i.e., go beyond what humans can do.) The stages of evolution are not this black and white - they are far more fluid. To simplify I think of the stages of evolution as follows:

1. Enhancement. Today, genAI primarily improves experiences we already have. The massive computer power of genAI will be sprinkled in many of the applications we already use to make things a little easier and a little better (i.e., more convenient, personalized or adaptive, and interactive education or entertainment). Apple, Google, and Samsung have all added genAI capabilities to their latest smartphones to summarize long text message conversations and edit photos. Using a mobile analogy, Uber and Lyft dramatically improved personal transportation services.

2. Displacement. GenAI is beginning to replace something or someone we already have or use for services. Initially, folks will focus on the one-to-one swap that genAI offers. GenAI will replace services offered by human beings today. While some of these services will target jobs (e.g., customer service professionals, designers, editors), the bigger opportunities will be in offering access to those without access today (i.e., comfort, access). Remember how smartphones replaced flashlights, cameras, and paper maps? 

3. New (ment). Eventually, innovators will use genAI to create a new product or service we have yet to imagine. These products and services are less obvious to us today. Some might put new drugs or therapies into this category. Others might lean into natural speaking- or moving robots who unload our dishwashers or cook meals. These products or services are likely to be agentive, adaptive, and emotive - hard to say what might surprise us. 

I spent nearly 25 years as a mobile analyst inspiring companies to use mobile technologies to reinvent their consumer experiences, products, and business models and then helping them execute. I am now doing the same with genAI as an independent consultant and analyst, Ping me if you’d like to talk. I love learning and want to help others use genAI to transform their consumer experiences and products.