Why chatbots are dead

I'm going to make a prediction that sounds insane: by 2026, chatbots are officially dead.

Not the technology itself. The experience. We're going to look back at all that time we spent typing paragraphs into a box and waiting for walls of text, and realize how absolutely cooked that was.

The future isn't AI that talks about doing things. It's AI that actually does them.

We've been calling apps with purple gradients and broken UI "AI slop" all year. But here's a better definition.

99% of AI apps right now swear they're gonna change your life. Then you get the same three little dots and a wall of text. A paragraph describing what you already know.

It doesn't do anything. It's a chatbot cosplaying as a tool.

Investors call these "thin wrappers." Products whose entire AI is just a prompt hitting GPT or Claude. No real workflow. No domain expertise. No ability to take actual, practical action in your life.

50% of AI funding went to these wrapper companies. But we're in 2026 now. We can't just wrap AI models with some system prompts and call it a day.

I love Perplexity's Comet Browser. But most of the time, when it controls pages, it takes forever to figure out what I can click in seconds.

And Apple Intelligence? Remember that WWDC hype about Siri doing things for you? Craig Federighi admitted the features were "not ready" and delayed them to 2026. Even Apple still hasn't cracked AI.

The companies that could build better are stuck. Too much politics, too many committees, too many approval processes. That's where indie developers have the advantage.

Here's a simple filter for every AI app you try.

I typed one sentence. The AI doesn't give me a paragraph describing what I said. It creates three actual tasks. It schedules them intelligently. Workout at 7 am because exercise belongs in the morning. Blog post at 10 am because deep work needs focus time.

You talk to it like a human, and it takes action like an assistant.

This should be our new standard:

Use it as a filter. Does the AI describe what it would do, or does it actually do it?

The real endgame isn't better chatbots. It's generative UI.

Google just announced this with their Research Blog. The AI doesn't just respond with text. It builds an entire interface custom for your question. Interactive tools, simulations, experiences, all generated on the fly.

We're not fully there yet. Current solutions are expensive and billed on top of base AI models. But this is the direction. If your favorite AI app isn't thinking about this, they're already behind.

In 2024, we were impressed that computers could talk to us. In 2025, we were told "we're in the age of AI agents." But talking isn't enough.

By 2026, the shift isn't just about companies delivering. It's about expectations rising. If your AI doesn't do things, real actions, real scheduling, real task creation, it basically doesn't exist.

The winners won't be chatboxes. They'll be agents that act and deliver. Apps that feel like experiences, not utilities.

Stop settling for AI slop. Demand tools that work.

Reply to this email - What AI tool has actually changed how you work?