AI is not eating UI

I came across this narrative the other day and it sounds very cool that essentially all interfaces will condense into chat based ones. However I'm incredibly bearish on this idea because this argument only works on two assumptions; People know exactly what they want and people are great at communicating exactly what they need.

Both of these cases are hard to satisfy for the large majority of people. Software is nothing but inputs and outputs and with this chat based interface we're putting incredible pressure on the users to articulate and know their needs. On the contrary click and point based Uls which are dominant on most web and mobile interfaces right now are generally more forgiving of half knowledge. You could begin with just inputting the least amount of information and then based on the visual feedback, click your way through to getting what you want.

I also believe that some Ul patterns cannot be further simplified and have reached their most efficient state. For example Perplexity wants to disrupt Google Search using their chat based Ul. For simpler things this works well as you get the answer directly. But for complex searches they send you 10 links, which ironically is what they were trying to disrupt.

I don't think everything should become conversational. A good example of that would be when people installed Alexa to switch on fans in their house. I understand the ease it brings for old people. But honestly sometimes the easiest way to turn on a fan is by pressing the on button and not having small talk with a robot

Finally I do think composable apps and this idea of transient Ul that is built for you based on what you want will be the future. There is no fixed Ul, things are generated and arranged in the most efficient layout possible to drive a decision from your end. Other than that I think the best apps integrate Al invisibly where the end user doesn't even realize something is Al.