By Vicky Sidler | Published 20 April 2026 at 12:00 GMT+2

Am I the only one getting sick of finding AI in absolutely everything? If you are tired of negotiating with hallucinating robots just to perform basic daily tasks, you might want to start actively avoiding anything labeled "smart."

My sister recently got a BYD Sealion 5. It is a genuinely impressive car. It has good range, great build quality, and it is incredibly comfortable. It also has a highly advanced AI voice assistant baked directly into the dashboard—and you can ask it to open the windows for you.

Which sounds like a brilliant, futuristic convenience, until you actually try it.

First, you have to activate the assistant. Then you have to speak your request clearly enough for the machine to understand you—which, in a moving car with road noise and two screaming kids in the back, is absolutely not a given. Then you wait while it processes. Then you wait while the window finally opens. By the time it is done, roughly three times longer than pressing the button would have taken, you have successfully accomplished something that a simple, cheap button on the door panel does instantly, reliably, every single time, with zero cognitive overhead.

But here is the part that really drove the point home: the kids figured it out. Now they are sitting in the back seats, asking the AI to open their windows. Over and over. Because it is fun. And there appears to be absolutely no way to restrict or disable it. The only workaround is to scream at them to stop—which is the exact opposite of what any piece of technology in a car should be making you do while you are driving.

This is not a feature. This is a feature-shaped problem.

Before we allow Silicon Valley to shove another subscription-based chatbot into our kitchen appliances, we need to look at exactly why tech companies are forcing this exhausting "innovation" down our throats, and the single, brutal usability test you must apply to your own business before automating another customer touchpoint.

TL;DR:

• Companies are currently forcing AI into everything—from cars to coffee makers—creating massive amounts of friction for tasks that used to be simple.

• "AI-powered" is just a marketing buzzword designed to impress investors, not a user-requested feature to make your life better.

• Studies show that consumers are actively exhausted by this tech bloat, and labeling a product as "AI-powered" actually reduces purchase intent across all demographics.

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Table of Contents:

Why Is Your Inbox Suddenly Writing Itself?

While my sister fights with her car windows, Gmail has decided I desperately need an AI to draft replies to emails I haven't even opened yet.

Starting in early 2026, Google pushed us into what they are genuinely, unironically calling "the Gemini era." Their new "Suggested Replies" feature doesn't just offer quick response options after you have read a message; it actively pre-drafts full, contextual replies based on what it infers from the subject line. You can technically turn off the legacy features, but the new Gemini integration is deeply bundled into Google's broader "smart features." Disabling it is not a simple toggle; it is a full-blown negotiation with your settings panel.

What this means in practice: before I have decided whether I even want to respond to an email, Gmail has already decided exactly how I am going to respond. The drafted text sits there, written in a voice that sort of sounds like mine but isn't quite, waiting for me to tap "send" without having thought about it at all. The message flows out of my inbox as if from me—composed by a machine, approved by my distraction, and received by a human who deserved an actual reply.

I cannot explain why this feels so deeply wrong, and yet here we are. And we are absolutely not alone in our frustration.

Are We Entering The "Worst In Show" Era?

I wish the car window and the auto-reply were isolated examples, but the AI-in-everything trend has reached a scale that is officially unhinged.

At CES 2026—the world's largest annual consumer technology showcase—the headline story wasn't an impressive new product. It was the "Worst in Show" awards, handed out by consumer advocacy groups to publicly shame the most egregious examples of AI being forced into products that absolutely did not need it. The winners included a refrigerator that required voice interaction just to open the door (failing half the time if the kitchen was too noisy), a $2,000 coffee maker that required a $139 annual subscription to have "conversations about coffee," and an AI-powered lollipop.

The crowd reportedly laughed. But it was the kind of laughter that's also deeply exhausted.

A 2025 Asana study found that 84% of workers experience digital fatigue, feeling completely overwhelmed by the volume of technology being aggressively pushed at them. When Microsoft tried to launch "Recall"—a feature that automatically screenshotted your entire computing session for AI analysis—the widespread public backlash was so violent they had to delay it for a year.

So if we all hate it, why do they keep building it?

Why Are The Tech Companies Ignoring Us?

The answer is brutally simple, and it has absolutely nothing to do with making your life easier. It is entirely about impressing the boardrooms.

Right now, "AI-powered" is a magical marketing claim that justifies wildly higher price points, attracts venture capital investment, and signals to the stock market that a company is keeping up. The pressure to integrate AI is coming entirely from investor decks, not from user research. Product teams are being told to add AI, so they blindly add AI. The vital question—"does this actually make the experience better?"—is entirely downstream of the question, "does this make us look current?"

They are doing this despite unambiguous consumer data. A study in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management found that across every single product category, labeling a product as "AI-powered" actively reduced consumer purchase intention compared to labeling it "high tech." Consumers simply do not trust it. They haven't asked for it. And they absolutely notice when it creates friction instead of removing it.

There is a very simple test that every company must run before shipping an AI feature: does this reduce friction, or does it add it?

The BYD window fails completely. A button is instantaneous; talking to a dashboard robot is not. Gmail's pre-drafts fail, too. Drafting a reply isn't the hard part of email; reading it, deciding what matters, and maintaining the relationship is. None of those things are improved by a machine writing the response before I have even finished the thought.

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FAQs:

1. Why are companies putting AI into everyday products?

Companies add AI to products primarily to impress investors and justify higher price tags, not to improve the user experience. "AI-powered" is currently a buzzword used to signal to the market that a brand is modern, even if the technology actually makes the product harder to use.

2. Does labeling a product as "AI-powered" increase sales?

No. A study in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management found that across all product categories, labeling a product as "AI-powered" actually reduced consumer purchase intent. Consumers inherently distrust the label and are exhausted by the unnecessary complexity it brings.

3. What is the BYD Sealion 5 window problem?

The BYD Sealion 5 features an AI voice assistant that can open the car windows. However, activating the assistant, speaking clearly over road noise, and waiting for processing takes roughly three times longer than simply pressing the traditional window button, adding massive, unnecessary friction.

4. How is Gmail's new Gemini feature changing email?

In early 2026, Gmail introduced Gemini-powered "Suggested Replies" that pre-draft full contextual emails before you even open the message. This creates a deeply impersonal experience, encouraging users to send machine-composed emails without genuinely reading or thinking about the correspondence.

5. What was the "Worst in Show" award at CES 2026?

At the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, advocacy groups awarded "Worst in Show" to products that egregiously forced AI into items that did not need it, such as a voice-activated refrigerator that failed in noisy kitchens and a $2,000 coffee maker that required a subscription to talk about coffee.