"AI app-building tools have made it inconsequential and mundane to turn an idea into a working prototype. You only need a couple prompts, a design file, or even a sketch to quickly generate something that looks (even behaves) like a real product. For product teams, this speed has changed expectations in the design and development process. Prototypes are no longer as special as they once were. They're now the bare minimum."
"But this speed comes with limitations. Many AI-generated prototypes are never meant to survive past the moment they're validated. They do their job in a meeting or a user test, but then they're rebuilt by engineering or even trashed. But the prototypes didn't "fail," they were just created with a different intention and outcome. The hidden cost of AI prototypes is that they can't move forward."
AI app-building tools make turning ideas into working prototypes trivial using prompts, design files, or sketches. Generated prototypes can look and behave like real products, accelerating stakeholder reviews and user tests. Many such prototypes are created for short-term validation and are rebuilt or discarded afterward. Treating AI output as automatically disposable creates hidden costs: translation work, rewrites, and slower product delivery later in the lifecycle. Some AI tools focus on rapid ideation while others produce outputs intended as first drafts for production. Product teams should evaluate tools by whether prototypes can survive beyond ideation and evolve through development stages.
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