Chatting to The Verge, Suleyman, who oversees Microsoft's consumer AI products, including Bing and Copilot, described current search interfaces as "completely broken" and "a total pain," arguing that voice-based AI interactions will be "100 times easier" for users.
Suleyman elaborated on this vision: "The UI you experience will be automatically produced by an LLM in three or five years, and that will be the default. And they'll be representing the brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organisations, just as each one of those stakeholders in society ended up getting a podcast, getting a website, writing a blog, maybe building an app, or using the telephone back in the day."
He said, "Each technological revolution produces a new interface, which completely shuffles how things are distributed. And some organisations adapt really fast, and they jump on board, and it kind of transforms their businesses and their organizations, and some don't. There will be an adjustment. We'll look back by 2030 and be like, 'Oh, that really was the kind of moment when there was this true inflection point because these conversational AIs really are the primary way that we have these interactions.'"
Suleyman highlighted the potential efficiency of AI interactions: "A brand and a business are going to use that AI to talk to your companion AI because I don't like doing that kind of shopping. And some people do, and they'll do that kind of direct-to-consumer browsing experience. Many people don't like it, and it's super frustrating, hard, and slow."
He envisions a future where personal AI companions will handle these interactions, making the process more efficient: "You'll come to work with your personal AI companion to go and be that interface, to go and negotiate, find great opportunities, and adapt them to your specific context. That'll be a much more efficient protocol because AIs can talk to AIs in super real-time."
Suleyman pointed out that similar AI interactions exist behind the scenes: "Let's not fool ourselves. We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space or between search ranking algorithms. So, there's already that kind of AI marketplace. It's just not explicitly manifested in language. It's operating in vector space."
As we move towards this new era of conversational AI, the transformation promises to redefine how we interact with technology and conduct our daily tasks. The future is poised to be more efficient and tailored to individual needs through the power of AI.
