On-device AI assistants are meant to be helpful – why do I find them so annoying?
I’m currently learning to work with Google’s Gemini AI lurking in the top corner of my inbox and Workspace apps. I’m not enjoying the challenge, so far. I also don’t know what its icon is meant to be; it sort of looks like a hole in the screen until you hover the cursor over it.
So far I’ve asked Gemini to skim some of my emails and get me the info I need, without having to read the whole message. Its replies have been almost as long as the email. One of my colleagues asked it to find something from their inbox and found it returned the same result as the original search bar in Gmail. So far, so useless. The theory is that this will get better as it learns and develops, but right now I have more use for a chocolate teapot.
Some efficiency savings will be found eventually, I’m sure. But the initial reaction across the ITPro team is quite scolding. I’ve heard “Go away Gemini” a couple of times since it was made available and another colleague called it “Clippy for the 21st Century”.
On-device AI can do many wonderful things but in my experience so far, its best achievement is raising blood pressure.
The AI assistants that you and I use directly, such as Siri, Alexa, or these on-device copliots are designed to be personable and to mimic human interaction. They try to learn from you. But at times it seems like they’ve been molded on the most annoying versions of us, (maybe our kids?) constantly popping up to ask you something. It’s distracting and, frankly, not all that helpful.
And this in-your-face approach to helping you out really isn’t a new way of doing AI, either. You may remember Cortana, the on-device assistant that used to be on Windows devices by default. I shudder at the memory of it suddenly speaking whenever I would test a new machine – a shock I was never prepared for.
Why does on-device AI have to be so conspicuous? People don’t even like notifications. We get annoyed when other people talk in the office. We hate distractions. And yet, tech giants are constantly deploying things that try to grab our attention.
For fun, I Googled “why is on-device AI so annoying?” and the Gemini AI search response was its only useful contribution to this article:
“On-device AI can be annoying due to its potential to be overused, intrusive, and can negatively impact battery life and processing power. Some users find it unnecessary for basic tasks, while others worry about its impact on creativity and critical thinking.”
Well, duh.
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