What They Didn’t Warn You About
You plan/build the AI. You shipped the AI. But nobody uses the AI.
What the hell went wrong? Don’t rush, we will get there, and you’re not alone.
- 80% of “smart” features in apps get ignored entirely
- 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots fail to show ROI (MIT/Fortune)
- Most users can’t name a single AI feature they use daily (WindowsCentral)
We were all building AI for the roadmap, not for the workflow.
So, let’s talk about how to fix that before 2026 gets here…
If your “AI feature” doesn’t save time, reduce pain, or unlock new value…
It’s not a feature. It’s an expensive hypeman.
So… Why Did We Build Them?
We just weren’t building for adoption. We were building for:
- 📈 Roadmaps that needed “AI in Q3”
- 🎤 Demos that made VCs nod
- 📦 Bundled features from platform vendors
- 🤖 Engineers excited to try the new LLM API
As Raji et al. put it: “Most deployed AI systems don’t actually function.” (The Fallacy of AI Functionality, arXiv, 2022)
Real-World Misses
🧬 Forward Health
- Raised $650M to launch AI-powered CarePods for clinics. Shut down all services in 2024 after patient adoption flopped. Why? Tech was cool. Experience was clunky. 📉 Source → Business Insider
- Promised AI-generated apps “like ordering pizza.” Raised big, went bust in 2025. Turns out, it was mostly outsourced dev work all along. 📉 Source → Wikipedia
🏢 Enterprise AI, Broadly
- MIT found 95% of AI pilots fail to return a measurable ROI. That’s not a tech problem. It’s a usage problem. 📉 Source → Fortune
Real world example: A construction rental firm cut 2M+ call minutes with a GenAI assistant, not because it was sexy, but because it saved reps hours a week. https://bit.ly/RentalsAI
The Real Truth
AI features fail for the same reason software fails: Nobody asked for them.
What’s the most useless AI feature you’ve seen? Or the one you shipped… that no one uses?
Before you ship the next “smart” feature, ask yourself one thing:
Would a real user ask for this without the word “AI” attached?
If not, you already know where it’s going. The shelf. Right next to your smart insights dashboard.
If you have an AI initiative in mind, let’s build better, together.
