You know what I’m noticing?
People are getting sick and tired of artificial intelligence.
AI fatigue is real, and I think it’s growing faster than tech companies want to admit.
People are over listening to stories narrated by those perfectly polished AI voices that somehow manage to sound enthusiastic and bored at the same time.
They’re fed up with AI phone systems that make you explain your problem to a robot, only to have the robot misunderstand you and send you down another electronic rabbit hole.
They’re tired of AI-generated photographs showing people with plastic faces, impossible backgrounds and suspiciously perfect features.
And now we have AI-generated commercials, emails and social media posts flooding our screens.
At some point, people simply stop paying attention.
They delete the email. They scroll past the post. They ignore the commercial. And when the robot answers the phone, they start pounding ZERO while yelling, “REPRESENTATIVE!” like they’re trying to summon an actual human being.
Tech companies keep telling us AI is here to stay. Fine. It probably is.
But, are businesses really willing to stake their reputations on turning every customer interaction over to machines?
Because there’s a big difference between using AI to help employees do their jobs and using AI to avoid dealing with customers altogether.
What happens when people finally stop playing the game?
What happens when customers deliberately start doing business with companies where an actual human answers the phone, writes the emails and solves problems?
I think people are hungry for genuine human interaction.
Yes, humans can be slow and they make mistakes. Humans occasionally have bad attitudes. But, humans can also listen.
People can understand frustration and they can recognize when a problem doesn’t fit neatly into Option 1, Option 2 or Option 3.
And sometimes they can actually fix the problem without saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Please choose from one of the following options.”
I’m Grandpa Grumpy.
AI can be a wonderful tool. I use it myself.
But, there’s a huge difference between using artificial intelligence as a tool and using it as a substitute for humanity.
Companies which understand that difference will probably do just fine in the future.
However, companies determined to replace every human interaction with a chatbot, robot voice or computer-generated message may eventually discover something their artificial intelligence didn’t predict:
Their customers left to go talk to a real human.