ai feature implementation strategy is essentially “how annoying can we make the ui” so people accidently hit ai features so these companies can brag about how “highly used” ai features are internally

March 29, 2026 - 15:14 UTC

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Google put “AI” where it used to say “All” like they thought they were being slick.
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Cory Doctorow calls it a "fatfinger economy"

Billions of dollars betting on a chance that users accidentally hit a button launching an unwanted feature.

pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/
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It's like typosquatting, but for UI. Ick.
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Why does it look like it has TWO AI buttons, judging from the sparkle icons?
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first one is for drawing with ai, second one is standard industry icon for 'agentic autofellatio'
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I think it's also about how activating these features is a way of letting these companies collect more of your data

for example, if you activate CoPilot, even if by accident, it'll surely analyze the context of its activation, watching your screen and shit

also, these are all assumptions
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Ex-IT tech here and, yes, you are correct. Some (like Copilot) can even scrub backwards on your search history and purchase history in browsers and (the real gold for them) figure out who you're connected to. If your data is sold to a company with connections to compare/manipulate it's worth more.
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every time i try to open ANY file attachment from my work mobile phone through Outlook it opens to the store to Install CoPilot

because I clearly need AI to view an excel file. or a Word document. i stg...
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I use Gmail for work. I tried to turn off the AI functionality bc I was so sick of AI wanting to rewrite my emails. But when I did it also disabled spell check and autocorrect. So I’m stuck with it.
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so you're saying to not update the app until the bloat is removed
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The number of times I have to click "not this time" in a day is horrifying
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nous sommes tous Jonathan Frakes
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Excel put “Ask Copilot” in the middle of the right click menu, right above “Insert” so now if you’re working by muscle memory to insert a row or column you turn on Super Clippy instead
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AI is so powerful that it takes a little longer than the rest of the UI to load, right at the place you were about to click something else that's actually useful
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It's like how, at least on mobile they'll just put the AI generated topic in place of the comment section randomly so you have click it and swipe over to comments or how transcript is on every video to trick you into thinking it's a chapter track
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Replacing the "compose" button on Twitter with an "AI Compose" that spits out what a tweet from you would sound like
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that would probably be hilarious though
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Companies keep using these shady tecniques to make their product appear more popular than they really are, yet somehow the shareholders never seem to catch on.
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Yeah, my Samsung phone just randomly started giving me AI story prompts when I exit my lock screen. They probably hope users will accidentally click in an article. No idea how to disable it.
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i tried to sign in to godaddy to resolve a billing issue, and it forced me through their little AI website creator flow before i could do anything else. no x button, no cancel, no "maybe later." i have a website already! aaahh!
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Big Autocorrect buying shares in mallard production and bragging about reduced levels of profanity
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The fact that I had to do this on my phone when I first got it is just lol
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The fucking TAB key in Gmail! What happened to that? It keeps trying to rewrite whole emails for me 🙄🙄🙄
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Feels like UI design in particular that past few years has just been more and more aggravating, even outside of AI features. The Apple liquid glass update is diabolical.
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Zoom literally swapped the locations of their 'exit call' and 'AI assistant' buttons in the UI.

The only way they can get people to engage with this rubbish is by tricking them. You'd think that'd make them think twice about the wisdom of implementing it lol
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Fricken Instagram pulled this UI nonsense a while back. Dark pattern BS.
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Like if it was one app that did it I could think it was just bad ux/ui (there’s so many bad ui decisions these days) but this specifically is such a common issue now, it’s obvious that it’s intentional to increase engagement metrics
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and you have a chatbot in the main menu that you can only disable if you log in in their website
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I feel like were only a week or two out from seeing the AI slop features activate automatically without any input at all, just so they can pad the numbers.
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They just need the “usage” numbers for the next quarterly results call so they can lure gullible investors. This is like the entire tech model 🫠
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D2 posting mentioned
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“how annoying can we make the ui” has always been a cornerstone of interface design. You want it just bad enough that people will put more effort into getting it to work without rage-quitting in statistically significant numbers.
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i was worried that this was bsky but eventually, after many seconds of staring at this image, i realized that that "X" was not a CSS close "window" button
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My Zoom is going up in price even though I don't use any of the AI "options."
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Microsoft did this to the M365 admin dashboard. The side menu has two new AI options at the top, and they are the only ones with color instead of being solid white. It's a fucking admin dashboard, stop trying to trick me into using your dumb ai shit!
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I do wonder how much of this is product managers getting a cheap boost to the ol OKRs
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An android oneUI update did this to my physical fucking power button.
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Looks like Instagram
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This is like reading the message board I'm on where feral cat rescuers recommend different ways to rig humane traps, to make sure the cats trigger them.
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At least this means they're desperate and losing.
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That is so scummy
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That's why you hover the mouse over any icon to make the word appear that says what it is. You don't blindly click on it. And no, you DO NOT use an interface where that isn't possible, IE a cordless cellular telephone with a "touch" screen.
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Hover doesn’t exist in mobile apps. Touch interfaces don’t have a hover state because fingers aren’t mice.
I think calling it a “cordless cellular telephone” displays your lack of familiarity with smartphones.

But if you’re suggesting to decrease or end your use of TikTok, I’m with you.
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I hate how it's the TOP option in the image menu in Google docs
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I became 5% closer to becoming the uni bomber when the POWER BUTTON on my s23 phone got remapped to the AI button in an Android update.
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me too
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Oh... I'm so glad I keep my updates off. If they do that to mine I'm going back to my old sliding keyboard and kissing the modern world goodbye.
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I, too, hate this experience.

I then need to go through a different menu to actually turn the stupid thing off.
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My stupid Google phone pulls up Gemini if you hold your earbud pause button for half a second too long, and I've never once meant to use it.
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Everyday I'm more glad my S20 is still working fine and increasingly fear the day it stops doing so
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I have an iPad and if I hold down the power button it brings up Siri, and like, didn't we decide years ago that holding down any power button on earth should always shut down the device? I thought this was a universal understanding
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My mum's phone did something stupid like that, we only found out when she tried to restart it and it came up with some other bullshit. She's not very tech savvy, I'm the one that has to troubleshoot for her.
"Power button controls power" should stay the most basic function any non-techie can handle
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This computer ditched the right-hand CTRL key to throw another "OOPS I just 'used A.I.' again" moment at me.
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I had that happen to me. Fortunately, I found an Android subreddit that showed how to reverse it.
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My laptop came with a button dedicated to opening copilot, it’s right next to the left arrow key. I’ve been doing a lot of spreadsheets for D&D purposes so I’ve been accidentally hitting the stupid copilot button a lot lately. I finally downloaded power toys so I could disable the damn thing.
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Upgraded my tv, same brand, and they’ve moved the ‘home’ button further down the remote & placed the dedicated ai button where it once was, right where the thumb sits so I’m always accidentally activating it.
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I've yet to see ai be commercially implemented in a way that isn't just another form of deception
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Screw that. We should all go back to using Mario Paint.
It made art fun and even gave us cute sound effects when we did stuff.

Meanwhile Ai just steals and consumes energy and produces slop.
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I just noticed that on Instagram yesterday.
Similar thing happened on messenger.
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Microsoft 365 web version keeps moving the CoPilot app around so I accidentally click on it.
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Looking at you, Google auto-response and AI feedback buttons..
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My phone doesn't even let me take screen shots by holding the butyons. It just summons the Google AI now. To do a screen shot i have to essentially molest the screen which will take the screen shot...after it scrolled somewhere else meaning im screen shooting something else entirely 😑
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I see you follow Destiny shitpost accounts and I already thought you had good taste. Neat.
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It’s starting to auto recommend music clips when I go to post stories now and that is also extremely annoying.
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IG is the king of this. try to search for anyone relatively well known and it will not give you their profile, but their name to tap on which gives you an AI summary of who they are. and then shows their profile.
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That's stupid.
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I loathe these ✨✨✨

AI HAS RUINED THE TWINKLE
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🎶It was always burning since the world's been turning🎶
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The AI bubble will pop, God Wills It.
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Got a new tv recently that generated pop-up ads to try out the AI features in the middle of watching tv or playing games. (One of the popups actually got me killed while playing resident evil). Only way to stop it was to let it take you through the whole tutorial, then turn it back off after.
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Fuck, mine does this too and I’ve been searching for whatever setting it is to turn it off
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That's basically coercion to make you use the AI lmao. what are we even doing here
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I'm so glad I have the brain damage that made me want every TV of mine to be a 3D TV so I only get to hear about the new ways TV UIs are being made worse.
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my wife would probably rip it off the wall and return it at that point. i feel like no tech will be safe to purchase until like 3 years from now, good fucking lord.
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wowwwwww. Shit like this should be illegal.
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I just had the thought of how much rage would be induced if a popup like that showed up during a highly anticipated round of a fighting game at EVO.
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The other day, I clicked the trashcan icon to delete an email, but it was actually the AI button.

I was both annoyed at how obtrusive the AI feature was on the interface and pleased with how they at least chose an icon that adequately represented it.
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DuckDuckGo's AI controls are like a Poll Tax quiz.
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I have close the document summary “feature” every time I finish work order. It is just do dumb
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Why tf else would the hot bar have 2 AI features but delegate draw to the miscellaneous bar?
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In the past year, so much more of my time is now spent telling a computer I don’t want it to do something. Whether it’s predict my text or route my call
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The best example of this is Google Maps replacing the speech-to-text button, a very helpful button while driving, to the Gemini button, a very unhelpful button while driving.
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My keypad doesnt have emoji options on it anymore. Had to turn off the toolbar entirely since they added that wretched curved star so you might thumb it while trying to type numbers.
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I feel like the AI features have an "area of sensitivity" noticeably larger than everything else I am actually trying to do
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-sigh- well said. I wish things weren't like this, it truly is exhausting.
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Can I just say that despite all the obsession with usability and accessibility over the last decade or so, how are we still inundated with tiny fucking incomprehensible hieroglyphics everywhere? What does a man need to do to get a fucking descriptive label on a fucking screen?
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I am so fucking sick of hunting around and trying to figure out what the weird rectangle with a sparkle means. I just want to outline something.
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Outlook replaced the send button with a glowing AI button. Maddening.
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Dark pattern
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Don’t you just love how majority of devices are useless now because a bunch of dumb fucks keep implementing AI into everything?
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Adobe got rid of the search function in the help tab, but you can ask the AI instead!!

I am going to become the Joker.
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These features will be removed as soon as the AI bubble burst occurs, especially on Google services, which are known for taking away features they once emphasized.
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Do not trust this symbol

✦

It is your enemy
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Excel now inserted some “use AI“ option where the “insert line” used to be in the right-click context menu, so I get to accidentally click it every so often, causing much cursing. Great fun, well done Microsoft
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in excel, microsoft moved the fucking ai button to where "Insert Row" used to be on a right click

i hate them so much
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One of my companies execs advertised our utilization internally that way too
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I am currently being spammed by my new phones ai features, every time I look at my phone there’s. Notification, “check this out”.
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If people actually liked this shit it would be behind ten-foot high paywalls, not being crammed up our asses in our sleep.
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They wish they had the demand of ozempic
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The business model has always been to force a wide adoption rate, and then jack up the prices.

You know, like how drug dealers tell you the first hit is free.
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I was trying to use google maps the other day, and quickly, b/c my battery was low. I got a prompt for using AI, on what has been a reliable, functional app. Why does it need to be more, and why are you getting in the way of efficiency? Ugh, clearly still mad.
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Knowing my innate lack of directional sense and the high error-rate for AI, I interpreted this as attempted murder on google's part. If I die lost somewhere, it'll be because of nonsense like this.
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100%. Facebook/Insta have made it so AI generated content looks exactly like clicking on reels.
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The only way they can get us to use it is to trick us.
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Not just companies can brag…. but individuals employees, managers, and teams too.

It’s how you get better comp, and helps build your promo packet.
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Those little stars are getting heavy use. AI! magic!
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I think the lesson to learn here is that these are not our places, we have to make our own. these systems will always be controlled by someone else. but if we make our own how do we find each other?
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Tired: Enshitification
Required: *Automagic Enshittification*
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It's the netflix model of "we count a movie as watched if a user hovers over it and it autoplays for a second on the mainscreen" way of counting metrics. Of course the new thing being promoted is the most watched thing ever if you have to move past it to get to anything else
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I am over the hype.
Our Tech Bro's have blown so much smoke up their own backsides, they feel entittled to do as they damn please.
In truth, I am not sure the tech industry have contributed half of what they have damaged or destroyed over the last fifty years.
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😡
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Tik tok has done this 🫩
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Microsoft has placed a “summarize” query prompt between the steps of highlighting text on Outlook and clicking “copy” and I don’t know if any decision has been more self-debasing in UI ever.
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My reaction to accidentally hitting an AI feature is the same as accidentally stepping in something on the sidewalk.
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If I have to be tricked to use this "super great miracle new thing", it's actually ass and I'm better off without. You can be damn sure I block/disable on sight.
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Why don’t they just realize that people don’t like it and stop investing?
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They (the companies) realized it a while ago, hence the sneaky placement to boost accidental usage metrics so that investors don’t find out they wasted all their money on garbage and tank the stock
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They're gonn reap what they sow,
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I am so skeptical now of any icon with a sparkle on it which feels like a nice encapsulation of how shitty and pernicious the AI craze is. they literally ruined sparkles
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"Suspicious" may have been a better word than "skeptical" but you know what i mean
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app enshitification.
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@icklenellierose.bsky.social did a video about Youtube doing this exact thing! It didn't occure to me, somehow, that making people accidentally hit the ai features was completely intentional. The "somehow" being because I'm an idiot lol.
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See how I mispelled "occur" for evidence of my idiocy lol.
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Instagram also ruined their search with this shit... Instagram I don't need you burning through fresh drinking water to tell me what the fandom I just searched up is about! If I'm searching for fanart of something chances are I already know what it is!!
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