What 'AI-Powered' Actually Means Now

There was a moment when "AI-powered" told you something real about a product: a genuinely new capability, built on a model that could do something the previous version of the tool couldn't. That moment didn't last long before the label started showing up on features that were, underneath, a small autocomplete bolted onto an existing workflow.

The gap between those two things matters more than the label does. One is a feature built around what a model is actually good at; the other is a marketing decision made after the fact, looking for a place to put the word. Users can usually tell the difference within about thirty seconds of actually using the thing.

The products holding up a year later tend to be the ones that were quiet about the label and specific about the capability — this finds duplicates, this drafts a first pass, this flags the outlier — rather than the ones that led with the word and left the reader to guess what it actually does.