The Killer App for Generative AI

Exactly two years ago, I published an article about The Importance of Killer Apps. At the time, a new platform technology had just emerged, spatial computing. Remember Apple Vision? That was the hottest tech right before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. I wrote then that no killer app had emerged for Vision, and without one, market success is unlikely.

Today, spatial computing is all but forgotten amid the generative AI gold rush. So, what’s the killer app for generative AI?

Yes, AI qualifies as a platform—it enables countless applications solving a wide range of business and personal problems. But a successful platform needs at least one killer app that drives the platform adoption across many audiences. The truly transformative platforms tend to have several killer apps. Think of the mobile phone: its killer apps include the camera, media players, messaging, and social media. The reason you're willing to spend $1,000 on an iPhone isn’t because of apps like Asana or Conga. It's because you no longer need a separate camera, music player, DVD player, or monthly supply of postage stamps.

So, what’s the killer app for generative AI?

Your first instinct might be to say, “There are thousands!” But if none of them clearly rises to the top, that could be a problem. It suggests that while the new technology is powerful, we're still unclear on why we truly need it or why we should pay for it. Some signs suggest that this might be the current state of the market. Many organizations are experimenting with generative AI out of fear of missing out (FOMO), yet very few compelling business use cases have emerged so far.

The leading contenders

Chatbots are an obvious candidate. Yet those powered by generative AI remain as frustrating to help-seeking customers as the pre-ChatGPT ones. Their primary function is still to deflect inquiries rather than to serve customers, which doesn’t really feel like a “killer app.”

AI-powered search and summarization is another strong area. These tools allow us to ask natural-language questions instead of typing keywords and can synthesize answers across sources. It’s one of my top use cases. Google should be worried. But is that “killer” enough? We’ve never paid for search - would we pay for AI search? I’m not sure.

Content creation also gets mentioned frequently, but that’s too broad to be considered an application. I’m also concerned about the rise of AI slop, mass-produced, low-quality images and videos generated from questionable training data that are flooding the web. The same applies to text content. Don’t get me wrong, I use gen AI for content creation and love it, but it’s becoming clear we’re being buried in AI-generated noise. I won’t get into the legal implications of implicit and explicit copyright violations, but those issues might soon face their judgment day.

Content generation alone isn’t specific enough to qualify as a killer app. Real apps solve specific business problems. I see a lot of promise in use cases like marketing content (blogs, email sequences, sales collateral), customer and prospect communication, memo drafting, business planning, and brainstorming. These are undeniably useful, especially when AI is used as a creative assistant, but the quality degrades quickly when left unsupervised. Creative assistant is a tool, not an application. People pay for tools, but tools don't become killer apps.

Naturally, I asked the AI what it thought could become the killer app. In addition to the areas above, it added a few more: code generation for software development, legal and compliance document summarization, and medical/clinical documentation and decision support.

I like these suggestions because they address real business needs. That’s what defines an app. You can’t be a killer app without being an actual app. These are industry-specific use cases, and I believe the future of AI will be shaped by domain-specific applications. Still, it’s a stretch to say that the legal or medical sectors are driving generative AI adoption, like killer apps would. Code generation might be the closest we’ve come to a killer app, but the millions of ChatGPT users who aren’t coding would probably disagree.

In summary, I don’t believe the killer app for generative AI has emerged yet. But I’m confident it will. Perhaps a new category will evolve, like "personal AI assistants" in the spirit of HAL 9000 or J.A.R.V.I.S. Of course, we’re nowhere near that level of capability. As long as prompt engineering is still a thing, we’re not getting close. Luke Skywalker doesn't have to think about the right prompt structure when he talks to C-3PO.

Until the killer app (or apps) emerges, generative AI will remain in the Trough of Disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle. The Plateau of Productivity seems distant, but the technology evolves very rapidly.

What do you think will be the killer app for gen AI?

Gartner Hype Cycle for Generative AI 2024