Some are just riding the hype, hoping you won’t notice the truth.
Here are 6 signs that the “AI” you’re being sold is nothing more than a buzzword in disguise.
1- All the buzzwords are everywhere, but we don’t know what the actual features are
So if there’s one detail that should tip you off, it’s obviously all these companies that are capitalizing on the current AI trend to add the famous phrase “powered by AI” to their products.
I’m sure you’re already familiar with this technique, which is called AI washing. In short, it’s a crazy and misleading marketing strategy that companies use to abuse the integration of AI in their products.
According to an article by Agility, startups that simply mention “AI” attract 15 to 50% more funding than others.
Take the example of toothbrushes, where it is said that thanks to integrated AI, these brushes can guide your brushing in real time. Did you think that was true?
In fact, it’s just pressure sensors, accelerometers, or gyroscopes that detect the movements you make and the force you apply to your brush.
This data is (sometimes) transmitted to an app that uses an algorithm to estimate whether you have brushed the areas properly, but this has nothing to do with the AI you might have hoped for. If the product description mentions the use of AI, it is just to attract you and investors.
Coca-Cola paid the price for this misleading practice
According to Wikipedia, Coca-Cola produced Coca-Cola Y3000 in September 2023 and claimed that it had been “co-created with human and artificial intelligence,” which led to Coca-Cola being accused of AI washing, as it was not clear how AI could have been involved in the design of this product.
The mere fact of using AI was just to attract attention, not really for the design of the product.
So, when you come across a technological product that simply mentions that it is powered by AI, without really explaining how it works, the features it offers, or the technological innovation behind it, then it’s just marketing and that should raise a red flag.
There is no technological innovation behind it
Like smart toothbrushes, which do not reflect the innovation we had hoped for, smart mirrors are described as having the ability to monitor your physical health using artificial intelligence.
🤷♂️ Do we really need this?
Do we really need a toothbrush equipped with AI to ensure that our teeth are properly cleaned? The same goes for mirrors.
We can also mention products described by the Synthetica blog, namely:
Personally, I cannot find this idea appealing before talking about technological revolution. These binoculars deprive us of the beauty of observation and analysis.
If I had the name of the bird every time I observed it, knowing that I had never seen it before, could I confidently say that I would really know what bird it was with the naked eye?
Would I have really learned anything from my observation experiences?
That being said, these binoculars are merely a reflection of the inevitable use of already trained AI models. Probably sensors, cameras.
Identifying this type of technological product that does not meet any real user need is a clear sign that they are taking advantage of the growing trend in AI.
3. Vague or Unclear Demonstrations
In the age of AI, it is very common to come across advertisements from tech companies promoting their products but leaving a feeling of inadequacy, as if these demonstrations were vague and unclear, hiding the technological shortcomings.
One of the best examples to illustrate this is a Reddit post by The__Tarnished__One (Visit the reddit post) published two years ago, released two years ago, highlighting the staging of the Gemini AI demo.
Google admits that for its video titled “Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI,” not only was it edited to speed up the outputs (which was declared in the video description), but the implied voice interaction between the human user and the AI was actually non-existent.
That’s not cool, Google…
This shows how far tech companies are willing to go to find ways to circumvent the shortcomings of their products without actually fixing them. Without exaggerating, I would say that they are willing to tell stories just to sell their product and then advertise it, using the term AI at every turn.
In the end, when we move on to actual use, we end up with a product that is a disappointment to our eyes.
However, these companies are smart, and relying solely on quick demos is not sustainable. What if, instead, we overestimated our product?
Apple, Microsoft, and Google have paid the price for this practice.
NAD found in April that Apple’s website had prominently advertised unreleased AI features for the newest iPhone as “available now,” for example, and that its small-print disclosures weren’t clear or conspicuous enough.
Most of those features have since arrived, but Apple’s site now more visibly warns that new capabilities for its Siri digital assistant remain in development.
— The Wall Street Journal
Google last year unlisted a YouTube video showcasing the Gemini assistant—including a brief disclaimer that the depicted actions of Gemini had been “shortened throughout”— after NAD began examining its depiction of performance and speed. The 2023 video, which shows Gemini doing everything from identifying a picture being drawn to composing music, now lives mainly on a company blog post discussing the kinds of prompts used to assemble it
— The Wall Street Journal
Microsoft removed a page promoting the Business Chat function of its Copilot assistant that claimed the product works “seamlessly across all your data.” An NAD decision released last month concluded that the phrase might lead consumers to think Copilot could perform tasks like switching from one Microsoft application to another and generating a new document there. Users still have to take manual steps to do that, NAD said.
— The Wall Street Journal
It is imperative to question ourselves whenever we are faced with overly vague and unclear demonstrations from technology companies and others, because these demos do not always reflect everyday reality.
4. AI Functionality Hidden Behind a Premium Subscription
This point is unavoidable and ubiquitous. There are countless products that offer a premium subscription just to access AI functionality.
In my personal opinion, there are many products that do not require AI functionality. I would cite Notion as an example, which does offer several pricing plans. I believe that the $10 plan is more than sufficient, even if it does not include access to AI features.
But it’s clear that it offers a $20 plan to benefit from it, even though there are other features. But I find that this $20 plan is being sold to us as a way to boost productivity, which is not how I feel about it.
I believe that the justification for this price is not the poor features added, but rather the AI. AI is the justification for this additional fee, and it shows how willing companies are to implement AI in their additional fees to justify subscription increases.
Like Notion, Snapchat is following suit by offering My AI, a chatbot that responds to the same requests as ChatGPT, although it is powered by the latter. Personally, I don’t feel that people are on Snapchat to pay a significant amount of money to benefit from its premium services if we consider the possibility of getting rid of a chatbot and an AR filter.
Especially since we know that these AIs collect data, young people on this platform don’t feel the implications of data collection.
Critics raised concerns about Snapchat’s new feature because of how young users of Snapchat skew, highlighting that they may not understand the implications of data collection or make educated decisions about what information is safe to share.
— BBC
The proliferation of products that simply hide AI features behind a subscription should be viewed with caution, as these products are not innovating. They are riding the AI trend, and your money should not be used to finance the expansion of products that are purely for profit.
Slower or less reliable than before
Word, Excel, Outlook, the entire Microsoft Office suite, and Bing all have one thing in common.
The integration of AI into the services they already offer has made them heavier and slower. In itself, AI is not a bad thing if its implementation did not make these products even heavier. And that is one of the drawbacks I am pointing out.
This is not necessarily a telltale sign of a product that is just riding the AI wave. However, when you prefer to follow trends at the expense of quality and user satisfaction, then it becomes a telltale sign.
Copilot is a nightmare. It’s suddenly infiltrated all of my Office apps and laptop and there’s no way to get rid of it. That bloody icon keeps popping up as I type in words and it’s so distracting it’s unbearable. Doesn’t Microsoft understand that graduate/PhD students receive an automatic fail or are charged with academic misconduct for any hint of AI assistance in their writing? Copilot is literally ruining lives and careers because there’s no way to turn it off!!!
Since AI was added to them, some products have become less efficient, leading to a degraded user experience and plummeting reliability, not to mention significant slowdowns.
The use cases presented are generic and unconvincing
There are many products that claim to be revolutionary but fail to convince.
It is not uncommon to see products that claim their AI revolutionizes x or y. But that x or y is a feature that at least 10 other products already offer. If the description does not present evidence or convincing features, then perhaps it does not bring anything new to the table and is simply trying to follow the trend.
Demo screenshots may show results without the slightest error, which is essential in order not to scare off investors or customers, but we must accept the fact that sometimes very specific queries are made to AI. Everything is scripted and planned in advance.
Other use cases that may seem interesting but are unconvincing are simply copies of other products.
Why this trend toward “AI washing” now?
You don’t have to look far to find the main reason: to attract investors.
Mentioning AI sells, whether it’s justified or not. And this idea is expressed by Forbes magazine in these terms:
Startups that mention ‘AI’ attract 15 percent to 50 percent more investment than those that don’t!
Why not inflate the use of AI in speeches to attract customers and investors if this tactic works? The Forbes Technology Council illustrates the concept well:
In a survey of retail and CPG executives on where they plan to invest in AI. 56% are looking to invest in AI for marketing and promotion help. […] Brands are looking to invest in AI across their organizations, making them susceptible to AI washing in many areas and party to illegal practices.
Another factor that could explain this trend is the lack of regulation.
If we are doing marketing and that marketing is poorly regulated, then we have a free field and fertile ground. In addition, everyone is jumping on the AI bandwagon so as not to miss out on a potential new technological revolution.
“But then, how can you tell the difference?”
Humility
A genuine AI product created by a company knows how to recognize its weaknesses. It admits that its AI is not perfect and that certain problems or hallucinations may arise. This is particularly true of OpenAI and its ChatGPT, which makes it clear that its artificial intelligence can be subject to hallucinations and errors. It doesn’t sell you a dream, because AI Washing sells you perfection; it never doubts itself because everything is revolutionary.
Technical clarity
A serious AI company is clear about how its AI model works and how it is trained. It does not just claim that its AI is capable of doing everything; it is explicit about how its AI model works. Mid Journey is clear when it specifies that its model is trained on royalty-free images and that users can influence the output by adjusting the parameters. One of the products with the greatest technical clarity is, of course, ChatGPT, and I believe that the concept of language models, natural language processing, machine learning, and text generation has become mainstream because OpenAI was explicit about how ChatGPT works.
Look for concrete evidence
Don’t settle for sales pitches claiming that it works, that it’s reliable, that it’s more efficient or smarter. If it’s a product, make sure there are measurable results, benchmarks, or even real results. If you can, do your research and dig deeper into a product.
Analyze the specificity of use cases
Keep in mind that when a product is created, it is to meet a clear and specific need. A product that tries to do everything is potentially a marketing bluff.
Conclusion
AI has the power to change everything—but only if we stop buying into the fakes. These 6 signs are your nonsense detector: use them, call things out, and don’t settle for hype dressed as progress. The future belongs to the tech that actually works, not the ones that just say “AI” on the label.