Pete Koomen on Horseless carriages

28 April 2025

Whenever a new technology is invented, the first tools built with it inevitably fail because they mimic the old way of doing things.

Pete Koomen uses Gmail's Gemini integration to illustrate that a lot of the current AI-powered apps aren't actually that useful. He asks Gemini to draft an email, and it fails at adopting his own tone and style.

He also includes an example of an AI-based tool for dealing with email. It took me a second to realise that it's not a screenshot of a prototype, but a working demo embedded in the page. I suppose, given the theme of the post, it would be ironic if it weren’t interactive.