AI Is the New UI
Why the next revolution might be the end of interfaces as we know them.
Previously on Giuseppe's Glimpse: In the last episode, we explored the B2Cization trap and why B2B borrowed the wrong lessons from B2C. Missed it? Catch up here! ✨
Buongiorno everyone 👋
I’ve been noticing something about how I interact with services lately.
I used to navigate menus, click through pages, search for options, compare things side by side. Now I’m increasingly just asking.
Saying what I need → typing a question → getting an answer
When I look at what’s happening with the companies I advise, I see this everywhere. The interface is shifting from something you navigate to something you have a conversation with.
How we got here
For years, we obsessed over interfaces. Menus, buttons, apps, websites.
We spent enormous energy designing customer journeys across channels. Mobile experience, desktop experience, in-store, call center. Each one carefully crafted and separately optimized.
The goal was omnichannel: be everywhere, stay consistent, let customers choose their path.
What’s emerging now feels a lot different. Thanks to generative AI and natural language processing, the interface is becoming less about navigation and more about interpretation. 🤔
It all starts with one entry point: “How can I help you?“
Behind that sits an intelligence layer that pulls from corporate knowledge, helps call center agents, supports in-store staff, powers chatbots and generates business intelligence.
Same brain serving multiple functions (and no separate channel management needed.)
From many doors to one front door
Think about it this way:
Omnichannel = many doors. You can enter through mobile, web, store, phone, chat. Each is a separate experience that hopefully connects somehow.
Optichannel = fewer, better doors. You optimize for the channels that actually matter and make them work really well together.
Solochannel = one “front door” for intent, many invisible back doors for execution. You express what you need once and the system figures out how to handle it. 📱
Recent Gartner research predicts 30% of Fortune 500 companies will offer service through only a single AI-enabled channel by 2028. They also say 70% of customers will start service journeys via conversational AI by then.
Those exact numbers might not hit, but the direction feels real.
This could mean:
→ Customers don’t need to figure out which channel to use or navigate complex menus. They just say what they need.
→ Companies maintain one intelligence layer instead of separate systems, knowledge bases and training programs for each channel.
→ Answers stay consistent. The AI doesn’t contradict itself across different touchpoints. ✅
→ Service shifts from reactive to proactive. When the system understands intent, it can anticipate needs.
Where I see this breaking down
This won’t work everywhere. A few areas where I think solochannel struggles:
Regulated industries can’t afford the risk. In healthcare, finance or legal services, AI hallucinations create liability nobody can manage. You can’t have an AI giving incorrect medical advice or wrong financial guidance. 🏥
Luxury and high-touch sectors risk losing their differentiation. Part of what justifies premium pricing is the human expertise, the relationship, the brand personality. An AI layer optimized for efficiency might make everything feel the same, which is exactly what luxury brands can’t afford.
Technical fragility becomes a real problem. One intelligence layer means one point of failure. If it goes down or gets trained on bad data, everything breaks. With multiple channels, at least one failure leaves others running.
Exploratory journeys don’t translate well to search. Many customer journeys aren’t about getting a quick answer. They’re about browsing, getting inspired, comparing options, building trust through exploration. You can’t search your way to “What’s best for me?” or “Show me something I didn’t know I wanted.”
For these, we’ll probably see hybrids. Conversation helps navigate, but you still see visual options to explore. 🔍
The disintermediation risk
There’s another risk that I think companies aren’t paying enough attention to.
The solochannel may not belong to the brand.
If people start using third-party AI layers (think ChatGPT, Perplexity, future versions of search) to find answers, those platforms become the interface. The brand becomes just a data source the AI pulls from.
You lose the relationship. You lose the ability to shape the experience. You become a commodity provider feeding someone else’s intelligence layer. 💭
Brands could build AI layers that outperform third parties by offering better answers and owning the entry point.
But that takes serious investment in AI capabilities, data quality and integration. Many companies won’t or can’t do it. They’ll end up answering questions through platforms they don’t control.
The post-UI era
For many sectors, this transition feels hard to avoid.
UX stops being primarily about front-end design and becomes about systems, data and governance.
How good is your knowledge base? How clean is your data? How well do your systems integrate? How do you govern what the AI can and cannot say?
These become the competitive differentiators, not the color of your buttons or the flow of your menus. ⚙️
Channels won’t multiply anymore. They’ll collapse into one intelligence layer that mediates everything.
I’m watching this happen with clients across industries. Airlines using AI layers to handle everything from booking changes to baggage claims. Banks using them to serve both customers and internal staff. Retailers using them to unify online and in-store experiences.
The ones doing it well aren’t just deploying chatbots. They’re rethinking their entire information architecture: how knowledge flows, how systems connect, how humans and AI divide the work.
My mixed feelings
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this shift.
On one hand, it makes things genuinely easier. Less cognitive load, faster answers, more consistency. As someone who’s spent years studying customer experience, these are meaningful improvements.
On the other hand, I wonder what we lose. Browsing can be enjoyable. Discovery has value. Sometimes the friction in a journey is where trust gets built, where you learn something unexpected.
But whether we like it or not, this is probably where things are headed for many industries. The real questions are: how do we build it responsibly, where do we apply it, where do we deliberately keep the human or exploratory parts that actually matter.
What do you think? Are we ready for this? Or is technology again moving faster than our wisdom about using it?
Stay curious 🙌
-gs
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