The Last Interface: Why AI Assistants Will Replace Apps, Not Augment Them
What happens to your brand when no one opens your app?
The Illusion of Digital Abundance
For decades, digital transformation has been closely linked to the expansion of mobile applications. Every problem, task, or service is accessed through an app — on your phone, on your desktop, or embedded in your car.
The promise was convenience; the outcome has been fragmentation. You switch between apps for banking, fitness, transport, collaboration, communication, and commerce, floating in a sea of interfaces while sinking in friction.
Enter the AI assistant. Quietly yet irrevocably, it is absorbing the roles of dozens of apps, merging fragmented functions into a seamless layer of interaction.
However, we misconceive this change if we see AI simply as an overlay — a helpful concierge guiding us through the current digital chaos. The truth is more profound: the assistant is not there to help you navigate apps. It is there to replace them.
From Platform Economy to Interface Economy
The platform economy over the last 20 years has relied on controlling ecosystems — Apple, Google, Amazon, and Tencent have all thrived by centralising attention, transactions, and data.
However, platforms depend on users navigating through a structure that involves tapping, swiping, and exploring layers. Now consider an AI assistant trained on your data, aware of your goals within context, capable of performing complex tasks, and compatible across systems.
In this emerging interface economy, the interface itself becomes the product. Why open the Uber app when you can say, “Book me a ride to the airport, use points if I have them, and avoid tolls”?
Why open six productivity apps when your AI can automatically summarise meetings, draft follow-ups, and prompt decision-making?
The assistant isn’t just another tool — it acts as the broker of intent. While it is excellent, the new battlefield isn’t about app stores; it is about who controls the interface between you and everything else.
Disintermediation on a Large Scale
The implications are enormous.
Brands that have built empires through apps and web portals face a future where their touchpoints may disappear. If consumers never open your app, you lose control of the customer journey.
Even worse, your brand voice might be replaced by the neutral tone of an assistant whose loyalty belongs to the user, not to your business model.
The AI agent functions as the main judge of trust. It chooses which brands to interact with, which offers to endorse, and which services to hide.
This signifies disintermediation at an algorithmic level. In sectors like financial services, retail, healthcare, and travel, the threat is existential. Your brand may survive — but only as an API endpoint, concealed behind the assistant’s discretion.
If you are not the one training or shaping the agent, you risk being excluded.
The Strategic Blind Spot
Most organisations are sleepwalking into this future.
Their AI investments mainly target internal areas — automation, personalisation, decision support. However, the agentic shift demands a fundamental re-architecture: shifting from siloed capabilities to modular, composable ecosystems that assistants can integrate seamlessly.
This isn’t just about deploying LLMs or creating chatbots; it involves establishing an operational and data architecture that is discoverable, explainable, and secure for third-party agents to operate within.
We are transitioning from UX design to agent experience design, yet very few organisations are adequately prepared.
What’s worse is that digital strategy still depends on outdated KPIs — daily active users (DAUs), clicks, conversion funnels — metrics rooted in an age of screens and taps. In a voice-first, intent-driven world, these indicators are as obsolete as measuring retail success by footfall in a mall.
The Future Is a Conversation, Not a Dashboard
The greatest irony? The “super app” that many firms strive to create is merely a fantasy.
The real super app is your assistant — an AI that works across all sectors, simplifying backend complexities and organising your life through a single conversational interface.
In this scenario, screens become optional. Interfaces fade into the background. Loyalty is redefined. Power belongs not to those who create the most applications, but to those who develop the most useful agents.
Call to Action: Focus on Building for the Agent, Not the App
The age of app-focused thinking has concluded.
The next major digital shift will not concentrate on adding features, enhancing user experience, or creating more streamlined interfaces. Instead, it will focus on those who develop, train, and oversee the AI agents that support interactions between individuals and their activities.
If you’re a strategist, ask yourself: what does your enterprise look like when your interface no longer belongs to you?
If you’re a technologist, consider: how do you safely, reliably, and transparently demonstrate your capabilities to agents?
If you’re a leader, ask yourself: are we creating for an assistant-first world or just defending a collapsing app empire?
The final interface has arrived. It doesn’t blink, tap, or worry about your download metrics. It listens, acts, and makes decisions.
Will you become part of its memory or its training data?
Inspired by recent industry discussions with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
Very thoughtful as always Tony. This is so true: "The Future Is a Conversation, Not a Dashboard" Who wants to open an app and look for the right button? I want to open an agent tell it what I want and have it do it for me!