The AI you use daily is changing fast—it's disappearing into everything.
Nowhere and everywhere, artificial intelligence is hiding in plain sight—in everything from software to surroundings.
When I need some AI assistance, I turn to Perplexity, Gemini, or ChatGPT. I go to chat assistants knowing what it is I want—perhaps a bit of research, an answer to a question, some French exercises, or to play around with an image. I don’t always realize that AI now comes at me from an increasing number of directions.
AI has begun to shift from standalone apps to integration deep inside the software we use. From there, it’s making its way to becoming embedded in the things we use, such as cars, lights, speakers, and other devices that sense and respond. The Internet of Things (IoT) has become the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), a transformation within a transformation. The next step is for AI to become agentic and just do things for you. That too has already begun.
That’s the future one has to be ready for, as it’s coming at a startling speed.
Deep integration
Anyone who uses technology will have noticed AI becoming integrated into software, making it smarter and more intuitive to use. The way Gmail guesses what you might want to write, or predictive text supplies the next word, and corrects grammar and spelling, are obvious examples of AI being baked into software.
One huge advantage we haven’t fully appreciated yet is that integrated AI means we don’t have to leave the task we’re working on and head to another app to retrieve information, only to come back to the original.
The way AI features are now built into camera software is a clear example. First of all, the camera does half the work for you by enhancing an image with its computational capabilities. For further editing, tools are increasingly becoming part of the camera software. You don’t have to get out of the camera to adjust the image or even recompose it. On the Pixel 10, the camera software actually activates its AI to guide you on how to take the photo.
Have you noticed a new experimental feature in the Chrome browser lately? The Listen to this Page feature, available for some users, now gives you an AI summary of the article or web page you’re on. It doesn’t read through the entire text, but culls out the important points and provides insight.
That’s more integrated AI at work, and it can make it easy for you to consume a lot more content more quickly. Should you want to read the entire piece, you’ll have to stop and do so. I wouldn’t be surprised if what comes next is a choice between reading the whole, the AI summary, or even asking questions. You already don’t have to leave a page to translate anything.
AI has also been making its way into the devices and objects we use, and is ready to require a human in the loop far less. I sometimes ask Alexa to turn my house on remotely before I arrive home, switching on lights, playing some nice music, and starting the air purifier, etc. But now devices will have more sensors and personalization so that a thermostat could put the cooling on to suit your preferences, or your tea kettle can start up when your car tells it you’re nearing home.
So, everything from wearables to smart home products can form an ecosystem personalized around the user. It will happen in the background, with AI working to make life easier.
Embedded AI is also well on its way to becoming agentic, automating tasks that you no longer need to attend to manually. A startling example of agentic AI is when a car senses that the driver is either sleepy or stressed and takes over control. Various Mercedes-Benz car models have been able to do this for many years. The car can change its route to go to a coffee shop or turn on music to help the driver relax when under stress.
Transparency at stake
Whether this AI-enabled world is utopian or dystopian depends on your perspective, but clearly, there are big problems in the picture.
AI in the background isn’t necessarily transparent. A phone camera certainly isn’t, come to think of it. It does what it likes with your images. While you have more personalization, you also paradoxically have less choice.
Consider how reading a specific type of news item or watching a YouTube video can then flood your feed with more of the same, whether you like it or not. That leaves you with the task of determining how to adjust the type of content you want to consume.
One of the major concerns is privacy. Even if AI companies attempt to protect user data, breaches are anything but rare. Considering the amount of deeply personal data involved, compromises with privacy are a frightening prospect.
The New Normal: The world is at an inflexion point. Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be as massive a revolution as the Internet has been. The option to just stay away from AI will not be available to most people, as all the tech we use takes the AI route. This column series introduces AI to the non-techie in an easy and relatable way, aiming to demystify and help a user to actually put the technology to good use in everyday life.
Mala Bhargava is most often described as a ‘veteran’ writer who has contributed to several publications in India since 1995. Her domain is personal tech, and she writes to simplify and demystify technology for a non-techie audience.
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