My Wild Thoughts on AI and the Future of Frontend Development

There isn’t a single day without news about the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Many companies try to keep themselves relevant by not just utilizing the well-known AI models like OpenAI’s, but also developing their own Models. Google has Gemini, Meta has Llama, and many others are joining the race.

With AI advancements bombarding the industry, it made me thinking what does the future of frontend development look like? My job heavily relies on this domain, and these rapid changes make me reflect on where we’re headed.

I’ve been using ChatGPT and also Github Copilot for the past year and I have to admit they’ve been incredibly helpful for my day-to-day UI development and ideation.

However, looking at the code generated by the AI, I can’t shake the thought that it might replace the junior role, leaving only the senior role to evaluate and refine the AI generated-code. If this happens, the senior role will focus more on the architecture, best practices, decision-making rather than hands-on coding.

This could make it much harder for beginners to enter the field, as they’ll need experience to reviewing and validating the generated solutions from AI rather than learning by building from scratch.

But then another thought struck me.

I remembered the movie Her (2013), where the protagonist develops a deep relationship with his AI assistant, which he always talked to. The AI on that movie really could help the main character to do everything he wanted, like reading and reply emails, checking stock market, and more.

Thinking about that movie made me wonder: What if UI design for web/apps becomes obsolete in the future?

Imagine a world where users no longer navigate through complex UI elements. Instead they simply interact with the AI through prompts or voice commands.

Let’s say you want to find a pair of shoe on a marketplace, you wouldn’t need to browse through menu and filters. You’d just ask AI and it would instantly present you with the best options along with the images, pricing, and reviews. No more clicking, no more searching. Just results.

With this shift, businesses and services would focus less on designing complex web and app interfaces and more on structuring their data for AI assistants to process and deliver seamlessly to users.

I know it might sound like a crazy thoughts, but I believe it’s possible. I’m excited to see how frontend development evolves in the coming years.