Cursor Turns Left, ChatGPT Canvas Turns Right: Two Paths of AI Products

"The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life." - Bill Gates

Truly successful products are those that seamlessly integrate into our lives. From the early days of the mouse simplifying human-computer interaction, to the iPhone revolutionizing how we interact with mobile devices, to today's AI-powered natural language interfaces, these milestones share a common thread: they don't require users to adapt to new technology. Instead, through clever design, they make technology intuitive, user-friendly, and aligned with our instincts and habits.

On 2024/10/03, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Canvas, a product that offers a new way to interact with AI beyond simple conversation, excelling particularly in writing and coding projects. Canvas's interface allows users to harness the power of AI more easily, highlighting its role as yet another enhancement built around ChatGPT.

In the realm of AI product design, we see two distinct philosophies. One, like Canvas or Perplexity, puts AI at the core, building new product experiences around AI capabilities. The other, like NotionAI and Cursor, subtly integrates AI into existing products, keeping the product itself as the focus, with AI serving as a powerful assistant. A prime example of the latter is the popular code editor Cursor, which seamlessly embeds AI into the familiar workflow of developers.

NotionAI and Cursor: Product-Centric Embedded AI

"The best tool is an invisible tool." - Steve Jobs

Unlike ChatGPT Canvas's AI-centric approach, NotionAI and Cursor opt for a more nuanced embedded AI strategy.

NotionAI is meticulously designed to blend naturally into Notion's various modules. It provides intelligent assistance in document editing, task planning, and team collaboration, but without stealing the show or becoming an overly prominent centerpiece. For example, when users are writing, the AI offers timely suggestions and text completion; when planning, it helps generate task lists or schedules. The hallmark of this design is a smoother, more natural user experience. AI silently assists in daily tasks without interrupting the user's flow or workflow.

Similarly, Cursor deeply integrates AI into the familiar IDE environment for developers. During coding, developers don't need to explicitly invoke AI functions; AI is readily available within their workspace, offering code completion, error correction, and optimization suggestions. For instance, when writing a complex function, AI automatically pops up with code completion suggestions and proactively provides fixes when potential errors are detected. If developers need to optimize or refactor code, Cursor offers cross-file modification suggestions from a global perspective. These modifications are presented as code diffs, allowing developers to iterate on their projects using the familiar code review process. This design significantly reduces the unfamiliarity of using AI, allowing it to blend naturally into the developer's daily workflow, thereby significantly improving development efficiency and code quality.

Does Embedded AI Offer a "Short-Term" Advantage?

The significant advantage of embedded AI products lies in their ability to deliver a natural and seamless user experience. In this model, AI is not a standalone function that users need to actively call upon; instead, it's integrated into their daily operations, becoming a powerful assistant that helps them complete tasks more efficiently without requiring them to learn new ways of working.

For many businesses, embedded AI is more appealing because it can significantly enhance the functionality of existing products without altering user habits. This allows AI to truly become a "silent assistant" for users, subtly improving work efficiency and experience quality.

Beyond optimizing the user experience, embedded AI products also have a clear advantage in development and maintenance compared to products like ChatGPT Canvas that need to be built from scratch. Canvas, with its AI-centric approach, requires building a new product ecosystem around AI capabilities. While we can foresee ChatGPT becoming incredibly versatile in the future, it can't directly leverage the mature ecosystems of existing products like embedded AI can.

Take content creation as an example. Currently, Canvas only simplifies the editing function but lacks comprehensive features like document management, linking, publishing, and even the ability to insert images. I tried embedding an image using Markdown, but it failed to display.

In contrast, NotionAI fully utilizes Notion's existing feature ecosystem. The addition of the AI assistant not only doesn't disrupt the original user experience but also enhances the functionality of the entire ecosystem without requiring the reconstruction of product features. It's a powerful complement to the original product, not an attempt to make the original product revolve around it.

This difference is even more pronounced in the developer environment. Canvas struggles to provide a complete development ecosystem. When it comes to tasks beyond coding, such as debugging, integration testing, version control, and deployment, Canvas falls short, and developers still need to migrate their code to a professional IDE. Cursor, on the other hand, leverages the powerful foundation of VS Code to provide developers with a one-stop solution, making all the necessary tools readily available and eliminating the need for frequent code migration, greatly improving development efficiency and user experience.

To achieve a user experience similar to NotionAI and Cursor, Canvas would need to build a complete ecosystem similar to Notion or VS Code from the ground up.

Final Thoughts

There are various strategies for positioning AI products, and the choice depends on the product's characteristics and the needs of its target users. Products like ChatGPT Canvas, with their AI-centric approach, reflect OpenAI's ambition to create a versatile, all-in-one AI platform.

This strategy requires OpenAI to invest significant resources in development and maintenance and may necessitate balancing potential conflicts with its existing API product line.

We've already seen hints of this potential conflict in the initial GPT plugins and the subsequent introduction of the GPT store. With the latter's launch, the former has essentially become obsolete.

In contrast, NotionAI and Cursor emphasize the core value of the product itself, subtly integrating AI and allowing it to play a seamless enhancing role. This strategy not only maintains the product's uniqueness and user stickiness but also fully leverages the advantages of AI, achieving a 1+1>2 effect.

In the future, AI will undoubtedly be integrated into more and more products in various forms. Finding the AI positioning strategy that best suits a product's characteristics and user needs will be a crucial factor in determining its success or failure. For product developers, deeply understanding user needs, accurately grasping product positioning, and flexibly utilizing AI technology are essential to seizing the initiative in this AI revolution and creating outstanding products that truly change users' lives.