The AI Backlash is Missing the Point
As part of my job as a full-time tech YouTuber I spend a lot of time reading comments. Probably too much time, if I’m honest. Generally speaking, when I read my comments I end up learning something about other people’s perspectives and seeing how people react to my work helps me be better at my job. That being said, I have to admit that sometimes reading the comments can be a bit annoying. As hard as I try to keep in mind that most things I’m reading are highly subjective and therefore no one is wrong there is still that human part of me that thinks “Oh my god, you are just so wrong about this.” Most recently, this has been with AI.
Multiple times per day I get comments that read something like this: “Company X is focusing too much on these stupid AI apps that no one wants or uses.” There are many ways to phrase this comment such that I would have no issue with it. For instance, “I do not find apps or features that use AI to be useful.” Great. No problem. That’s virtually never how it’s phrased though.. Let me dig a bit deeper into why I am so exhausted by these sorts of AI comments.
One of 242,343 comments like this I have gotten.
AI Is a Garbage Can Term
When we say “these AI apps” what do we mean? There are some obvious ones like image generation we see in Pixel Studio or Sketch to Image or LLM stuff like Gemini. But what about Circle to Search? Does that count? Technically, shouldn’t it? The problem with just blanket terming AI is that you’re now talking about like two-dozen features and apps on a given phone that are quite different from one another. They’re all bad? Every single one? And no one uses any of them? Yeah, I just don’t think so.
AI = Mad
For many, the mere mention of AI seems to spark frustration. I believe, though perhaps it's presumptuous of me, that several features currently met with disdain would have been welcomed if their AI-driven nature had remained unknown. The assertion that these tools are useless—every single one of them—seems patently absurd. The reality is this: we live in a world where phone hardware just isn't going to shift dramatically year over year anymore. Phones are a well-established concept at this point. Revolutions will come via software now, not hardware.
Watching people reject new software features simply because AI is used is frustrating. Essentially, they're asking for fewer new features, and that's a shame. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are aspects of AI that I can totally understand being skeptical of or resistant to. There are moral concerns to be had with image generation and LLMs. These tools will impact many people’s jobs as well. I get that and if that’s your reason for rejecting these tools outright, that’s fine. The problem is virtually no commenter says these things. They say AI apps are useless and move on.
They’re Just Not Useless
I use Gemini literally every day and I would hate to stop. When I’m writing a news story and making a video, I will often be looking at someone else’s take on it. To avoid their opinion shaping mine, I will feed the post to Gemini and have it pull out the basic facts for me to work from. When I’m organizing specs about a phone I will often feed Gemini the data and ask it to make a table and in about 3 seconds, that’s done. Hell, there are things on this website written in css or html that I got stuck on and Gemini helped me fix the code. The other day I gave Gemini a photo of my medicine label and asked why I felt jittery. From that label, it knew what the medication likely was and explained how the cough suppressant makes you jittery and suggested and alternative.
You cannot tell me Gemini isn’t useful. I could go on for an entire dedicated article of all the ways I use Gemini on a daily basis.
Tools like Magic Editor are amazing. Just the other day I wanted to take a photo of my snow covered barn, but there were issues with the shot from every angle. What did I do? I took the shot and assumed that in about 30 seconds I could have the shot that was in my head. And before anyone tells me how wrong it is to modify my image like this, changing it from a memory into something that never happened, I get it. Here’s the thing though, in my mind and in my memory the focal point was the barn and the snow. I’m not thinking about the trash can or the houses or the cars. I like it better this way and the fact that I could do that without having to fire up a photo editor is amazing to me. When I show it to people… They think it’s amazing too. It blows people’s minds.
Do you know how often I use Circle to Search? Every single day. Often than not, I’m translating text or extracting text from images. Do we not think that intelligence is artificial? I love making dumb photos in Pixel Studio to send to friends in place of generic emojis. I’ve even used images generated with Studio in my thumbnails!
Live transcriptions in the recorder apps or in the phone app? That’s AI. Live Translations? Ai. The processing pipeline that every single photo you’ve taken on your phone for the last decade? AI.
Again, I get the moral concerns. I really, really do. I just also think that dismissing every single feature that mentions AI without thought is radically silly. If you want to be specific, do that. If you want to tell me it’s wholly moral concern, you’ll have my respect. But don’t tell me it’s all worthless garbage no one is using, because I’m going to tell you that you’re wrong.
Get Outside the Tech Bubble
I've talked about this a few times lately in the shadow of the Galaxy S25 launch, so I won't dive too deeply here. The S24 series was seen as too iterative, too similar to last year's phones by the tech community, perhaps due to downgrading the telephoto camera on the Ultra and relying too heavily on AI tools. It proceeded to outsell the S23 series on the back of the AI apps that a large portion of said tech community abhor. I fear that sometimes some people are finding themselves in a “can't see the forest for the trees” situation with this stuff. They're so caught up on the buzzwords that they're not giving an honest assessment of these tools and how they could actually be useful to them. Non-techies don't seem to have this issue. They see a phone, they see stuff they think is neat, and they buy it. With Google's Pixel phones selling better and better, largely by focusing on AI apps, if the S25 also sells well, it will be high time to admit the market has spoken.