The 'AI Feature Factory': Are We Forgetting the User in the Generative AI Gold Rush?


Every roadmap review lately seems to include the same question from leadership: “What’s our AI strategy?” The pressure is immense. We’re all feeling the push to integrate AI, launch flashy features, and ride the hype cycle. But in this gold rush, are we losing sight of the user?\n\nWe seem to be entering a new era of the “feature factory,” but this time it’s powered by LLMs. Teams are shipping impressive tech that often feels like a solution searching for a problem. This isn’t just inefficient; it’s dangerous. Building complex AI features without a deep, validated understanding of the user problem can burn through engineering resources and erode user trust when the shiny new tool doesn’t actually help them.\n\nThe principles of good product management haven’t changed. Our job is still to identify critical user needs and deliver valuable solutions. In fact, cutting through the AI noise to focus on genuine pain points is more important than ever. We need to ground our AI strategy in solid user research, not just technological possibility. Integrating continuous discovery and synthesizing user feedback from all channels is key. At https://leera.io, we believe AI should be used to accelerate understanding the user, not as an excuse to skip that crucial step.\n\nHow are you balancing the top-down pressure to implement AI with the bottom-up need for genuine user problem discovery?