There are still some people who claim that AI is overhyped and underutilized. The only thing AI is good for, so the argument goes, is chatting and making silly anime images. It’s not hard to see why this view prevails, especially when you look at the headlines.
But believe it or not AI is alive and well, and it’s clearly going to change a lot of things forever.
My personal epiphany happened just the other day, while I was "vibe coding" a personal software project. That’s what they call it now, by the way, when you use an AI tool to write all the code for your application.
Those of us who have never written a line of code in our lives, but create software programs and applications using AI tools like Bolt or Lovable are called vibe coders. I guess there are worse names that could have stuck.
I didn’t have to rely on somebody else, I could write my own tool because I now had AI available at the click of a mouse button.
Anyway there I was, vibing away on my project, when I suddenly hit a roadblock. I needed to quickly convert a bunch of files from one format to another. So I did what I’ve always done and did a quick search to find a free software utility I could download and use.
After a ten minute hunt, filled with bloated commercial tools I didn’t need, and free downloads that Windows delightedly told me were dangerous and would ruin my life forever, I gave up.
Then it hit me. This wasn’t the bad old days. I didn’t have to rely on somebody else, I could just write my own tool, because I now had AI technology available at the click of a mouse button.
So I fired up my faithful coding buddy, CodeCompanion, wrote my prompt in the box in plain English: "Please create me a quick and easy app to batch convert .odt files to .docx format with a simple UI." A mere six minutes later I had the tool I needed ready to go.
No searching, no buying, no virus worries, just exactly what I needed. You can find the tool here on Github.
The end of legacy freeware
It was at that moment I realised the old legacy freeware market was doomed. Why on earth would anyone want to rely on somebody else to produce this sort of thing if they could so easily do it themselves?
Then, the other side of the coin hit me. Vibe coding will probably result in a huge explosion of software products in the open source arena. We no longer have to rely on expert coders to create useful tools. Now anyone can do it, and upload to GitHub for the world to enjoy.
It’s hard to know what the ultimate result will be of a proliferation of this sort of homegrown DIY software. We’ve already heard tales of the ease of creating malware using AI, but the genie is most definitely out of the bottle.
It looks like we’re heading towards a world where anybody with an application idea will be able to create and distribute it in minutes. Strange times!
More from Tom's Guide
- 5 tips to get the most out of ChatGPT from someone who uses it every day
- I ditched to-do lists for ChatGPT Tasks — here's 5 ways it's changed everything
- I test AI chatbots for a living — 7 common glitches and what to do when they happen
