Commentary: AI assistants, AI phones and embodied AI still lack real demand
An opinion column republished by Huxiu argues that consumer AI assistants such as Meta Muse, Alibaba's Qwen Go personal agent and Ant Group's Lingguang come from corporate positioning rather than proven user demand. Citing Zeng Ming's "three stages of AI", the author says the industry is still in the infrastructure phase, with genuine commercialization so far largely limited to AI coding and office work such as Claude Code, while AI Q&A paid-conversion sits near 5% and AI phones and embodied AI also show no real demand. The column's mentions of Qwen Go's imminent launch and a small-scale Lingguang beta are relayed from media reports and are not officially confirmed.
If consumer AI agents really lack organic demand, vendors may need to rethink how fast they invest in and monetize them.