WHY DO COMPANIES KEEP ADDING AI FEATURES THAT NO ONE ASKED FOR?

Introduction

It's a fair question, don't you think? "If most people are annoyed by AI features being added to products that were working fine without them, why do companies keep doing it?" I think so too.

The short answer is that it's not about you needing AI - it's about them needing to say they have it. I covered the business reasons (investor pressure, competition, fear of being left behind) in Why is AI suddenly appearing everywhere, so I won't repeat all that here.

What matters more is what this means for you and how you should respond.

Most of these features will disappear

Companies are experimenting with AI in every product to see what sticks, and most of it won't! When people don't use features, those features get quietly removed, redesigned, or made less prominent.

The AI summaries in search results that everyone scrolls past? Usage data shows that, and it affects future product decisions. The writing assistant that people keep disabling? Product teams see those metrics. Companies do pay attention to what people actually use, even if they're slow to admit when something isn't working.

This means the annoying AI features you're dealing with now probably won't all be here in a year or two. Some will be refined into genuinely useful tools, most will fade away, and a few will be completely removed when companies realize nobody wants them.

Your non-usage matters

When you turn off AI features or simply ignore them, you're not just reclaiming your own experience - you're contributing to data that might eventually lead to better product decisions.

Every time someone disables Copilot in Word, Microsoft's product team sees that in their metrics. Every time someone scrolls past an AI summary to click a regular search result, Google's analysts notice. Every time someone closes an AI suggestion without using it, that's recorded somewhere.

You don't have to actively campaign against features you don't like - just not using them is enough. Companies interpret low usage as feedback, even if they don't publicly admit it.

You're not obligated to try everything

One of the subtle pressures companies create is the feeling that you should at least TRY new features to see if they're useful. You don't have to do this.

If a feature looks annoying, sounds intrusive, or appears to solve a problem you don't have, you can ignore it completely without giving it a chance. You're not falling behind or missing out - you're being sensible about not wasting time on things that in all likelihood won't help you.

The genuinely useful AI features will become obvious over time because other people will use them, talk about them, and you'll hear about them through normal channels. You don't need to be an early adopter of every AI experiment to benefit from the few that actually work.

The features that survive will be the ones that solve real problems

In a year or two, the AI landscape will look very different because market forces will have sorted the useful from the useless.

Features that genuinely help people will be refined and improved. Features that were added for marketing purposes but don't actually work will be quietly downplayed or removed. Features that are intrusive or annoying will be redesigned to be less so, or they'll disappear entirely when the usage numbers don't justify the development cost.

You don't have to figure out which is which right now - time and other users' behavior will do that for you. Your job is just to use what helps and ignore what doesn't.

The bottom line

Companies are adding AI features because of business pressures, not because you need them. Most of these features will fail or be significantly revised based on user feedback. Your decision to ignore or disable features you don't want is itself useful feedback that affects future product decisions.

You're not required to try everything, you're not falling behind by ignoring things, and the AI features that actually matter will make themselves obvious over time. Everything else is just companies experimenting at your expense, and you have every right to opt out.

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