Back in 2006, at the height of the Web 2.0 boom, everything was labelled “user-generated content.” Blogs were user-generated, encyclopedias were user-generated, and video platforms were user-generated. If a human typed, clicked, or uploaded something, marketers found a way to attach the term. The hype climbed so high that Time Magazine named “You,” the content-creating user, the Person of the Year. That was the peak. And then the phrase quickly faded. Not because user-generated content disappeared, but because it became the default. By 2010, no one bragged about being “Web 2.0” anymore. It was simply how the internet worked.

We have seen this pattern before. First, with “mobile-friendly,” when apps and websites proudly announced they could survive on a smartphone screen. Then, with “cloud-based,” when every B2B product trumpeted that it ran somewhere other than a dusty on-prem server. For a short while, these labels signalled innovation. However, as soon as the entire industry adopted the shift, the labels became unnecessary. The market stopped caring. The novelty became an expectation.

Today, “AI-powered” is following the same trajectory. Every startup, SaaS tool, and even household gadget claims it. I recently saw an AI-powered toothbrush. When a pitch deck opens with “we use AI,” it lands with the same impact as “our product works on mobile” or “our service is cloud-based.” In other words: of course it does. These labels no longer differentiate. They only confirm that you meet the baseline requirements of modern software.

This loss of meaning is happening because AI has already crossed the line from feature to infrastructure. In the same way, no founder today wonders whether to use the cloud; no founder will wonder whether to use AI. The real question is how deeply AI shapes the product. Does it transform the workflow? Reinvent the interface? Compress time-to-market? Improve customer outcomes beyond what humans alone could achieve? That is where value and differentiation now live.

The companies that win in this wave will not be the ones shouting about AI. They will be the ones who treat it as a given and focus instead on what becomes possible because AI is foundational. We are already seeing this. Products that adapt their onboarding flows in real time. Internal systems that eliminate hours of back-office work without fanfare. Design and engineering teams are delivering in days what used to take weeks. None of these advantages appear on a landing page as a shiny label. They show up as speed, quality, reliability, and margins.

So the next time a founder leads with “AI-powered,” it feels a bit like a throwback to 2006, when everyone insisted their product was “user-generated,” or when every site bragged about being “mobile-friendly,” or when “cloud-based” was the hottest bullet point. We know how those stories ended. The terminology faded, the behaviour became universal, and the real winners were the companies that built something genuinely useful on top of the new infrastructure.

Which brings us to today. Do not tell me your product uses AI. Tell me what your product can do that was impossible before AI existed. Tell me why it could not have been built five years ago. Describe how your workflow changes, how your cost structure evolves, and how your customer experience improves as AI is embedded. In an era where AI is everywhere, differentiation comes from imagination and execution, not from the label on the box.