It’s coming. Generative AI will change the nature of how we interact with all software, and given how many brands have significant software components in how they interact with customers, generative AI will drive and distinguish how more brands compete.
In our last HBR piece, “Customer Experience in the Age of AI,” we discussed how the use of one’s customer information is already differentiating branded experiences. Now with generative AI, personalization will go even further, tailoring all aspects of digital interaction to how the customer wants it to flow, not how product designers envision cramming in more menus and features. And then as the software follows the customer, it will go to places that range beyond the tight boundaries of a brand’s product. It will need to offer solutions to things the customer wants to do. Solve the full package of what someone needs, and help them through their full journey to get there, even if it means linking to outside partners, rethinking the definition of one’s offerings, and developing the underlying data and tech architecture to connect everything involved in the solution.
Generative AI can “generate” text, speech, images, music, video, and especially code. When that capability is joined with a feed of someone’s own information, used to tailor the when, what, and how of an interaction, then the ease by which someone can get things done, and the broadening accessibility of software, goes up dramatically. The simple input question box that stands at the center of Google and now, of most generative AI systems, such as in ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, will power more systems. Say goodbye to drop down menus in software, and the inherently guided restrictions they place on how you use them.